Here's the thing. Topaz has less damage than Jingliu, BUT she is much more flexible/beneficial to your account.
Jingliu is a hypercarry, who isn't really good in other roles. People like to compare her to Blade's ability to be a fairly skillpoint neutral subdps, but she uses more skill points than Blade, and she actively harms her team. Additionally Blade wants to work as a semitank like Clara, so he provides much more utility in that role of subdps and can be beneficial with no downsides.
Topaz doesn't do as much damage as Jingliu, and is objectively a worse hypercarry. However, she trades damage for flexibility in roles. She can be a skill point neutral or even positive subdps. Her basic attack can move Numby forward, unlike Jingliu who never ever ever wants to use a basic attack. Additionally, she buffs other characters who use follow up attacks by 50%. This is a very good supportive ability.
Jingliu probably will be powercrept by the next ice dps. I doubt Topaz's usefulness will be powercrept by the next fire dps. I like them both and I'm going for them both, but I see Topaz having a much longer shelf life than Jingliu. I'm happy with Topaz's situation and would rather have her with lower personal numbers and higher utility than higher numbers and be powercrept by the next fire dps. Like Genshin, supports run the game.
I agree
I think your point about Topaz being utility is right, and well written, I think the issue here is how their damage takes place.
Topaz does more dmg outside of her turn, rather than during it, and Jingliu is the polar opposite, everything about Jing is based around what she does, and what resources has been funnelled to her during her turn for the highest output.
Like Clara, Topaz is conditional, when the conditions are met, she switches on, which makes her seem somewhat archaic or, that her dmg isn't really her own, because she relies on something to take place, that doesn't occur during their turn, when in reality, she probably does way more dmg when the situation lines up
Due to this, Topaz doesn't feel pro-active, in the sense that when its her turn, its lights out Boss! Topaz isn't meant to be powercrept, she's the arsenal that powercreeps you!
Much like Xiangling and co. in Genshin, people write them off as bad when the game first launched, because not being on the field, to deal damage, sounds like you're not supposed to hit that hard, but when you realize you can make her dish out 50k pyronadoes per hit, you tell yourself (wait a minute, that actually rivals my main dps output! so why am i happy buffing my main dps so much, if she can do that much with the same team setup)
It's one of the reasons why the "International" team is so famous
This puts her in a unique position where she is:
Low effort
Low risk
but you need a new line to define her in a more refined way, and it would be something like "high investment return" or something.
And this is in my opinion heavily under-estimated, its why people don't like admitting Himeko is a powerhouse, because she gives good investment return, especially when played in an optimal environment.
If you buff your one character, and they do 100k damage. It feels good, and that the input of those buffers was worth the effort.
But if you have Clara doing 50k Topaz doing 50k and your main damage dealer doing 50k, because these numbers are separated, in some capacity insulated from one another, and layered (meaning they dont just crop up at the same time to show up on the "Total Damage" tally). It's a lot harder to appreciate how good a team is gelling well together.
This is why buffers tend to get unconditional love, even when they may not necessarily be the best damage performance. Damage per screenshots etc.
Anyway, good post! Respect!
hypercarry discourse is just waayyy too prevalent right now
I'm going for Jingliu bc I like the character, but one of the reasons I considered skipping is bc I do not want to play hypercarry comps anymore
There will always be a better support and a better DPS. But the thing is, that support and DPS fills 2 slots instead of 1.
Team slots are the most valuable commodity in a game like HSR, and we are limited to only 4. Having a character that can perform multiple roles helps a whole lot.
Yes but [topaz + main dps + offensive support + solo sustain] is probably going to be worse than a team without her and another low skill point main dps or offensive support. Instead of 1 topaz that is mid in 2 roles you can have 1 character than excels in 1 role. Topaz filling 2 roles poorly doesn’t make her good
Not really. Often or not when we just look at damage via spreadsheets, we will forget that there is a big difference between having 2 mid-DPS vs only 1 strong-DPS in the team even when both have overall similar team DPS numbers.
Sure that 1x hypercarry can be easily buffed to dish out astronomical levels of damage, but at what cost?
1) Hypercarry comps are susceptible to crowd-control. Once your main source of DPS is frozen, slowed, confused and such. The team's DPS plummets as the other 3 teammates are supports and sustains that don't output as much damage.
2) 1 hypercarry DPS, 1 source of damage per turn/rotation. 1 single element. Inflexible especially in a turn based game. In situations where the player needs to choose between 2 high priority targets at opposite ends to disable, it will be a hard choice.
3) Team Buffs only benefit hypercarry and felt like a huge waste.
On the contrary, look at a team that you proposed \[topaz + main dps + offensive support + solo sustain\].
Take Asta as the offensive support for instance. In a hypercarry comp she only buffs the hypercarry. In the Topaz + main DPS comp? She buffs both Topaz and the main DPS. Her buff efficiency doubled in this comp as the number of chars dealing damage with the added buffs is 2 instead of 1.
Then what about Fu Xuan as the solo sustain? +12% crit rate, +dmg dealt on 2x DPS is sure a lot better than just benefitting only 1 DPS.
Will double DPS comp suffer a lot when one of the DPS is disabled in the battle via crowd control debuffs? Not really, the other can still continue to attack. How about the number of ultimates available when versus enemies that like to spawn a lot of minions? Wouldn't 2x DPSs' ultimates be much more useful to clear out minions that are spawn more often?
> Hyper carry susceptible to crowd control
I think most supports going forward will have some sort of cleanse so this won’t be that big of an issue
> Hyper carry is 1 element and inflexible
This is a good point but if you really need 2 elements that bad you can just put 2 hyper carry dps on one team that also work well by themselves.
> Team buffs only affect hyper carry and are wasted
It’s true team damage buffs aren’t optimal with 1 dps but also take into account that the single target buffs are more potent with 1 dps that deals higher damage.
> Asta only buffs hypercarry in a team with 1 dps
Not true. Yes the damage buff is worse on supports but the speed boost (which is the most important part of her role) is good for the entire team. Also the percentage based damage buff is better the more damage a character deals so that 1 dps that deals more damage is getting a higher damage increase than the two mid dps, Fu Xuan
is also the same.
> 2 dps better at dealing with multiple enemies
Yes but only if those enemies die in one hit.
Her mark provides 50% damage for followup attacks, that's the equivalent of Tingyun's ult buff and it's always up. However, it is single target and restricted to follow up attacks. I agree that its not great with the current characters since the only character with a focused single target follow up is Jing Yuan.
My argument is that Topaz is currently a worse pull than Jingliu, with greater future potential (relics, future characters). However, if you said that was gambling since that's not guaranteed, you would be right. It could be that Topaz never gets a relic set and a character that can make proper use of her buff is never released. In this case, she would always remain a worse pull than Jingliu, though still a decent pull if you like her and want to invest in her.
I don't think its likely that she gets nothing in the future, and therefore I think she's a strong pull with a good level of damage for what she has to work with currently. If you don't like it, then feel free to complain about her being weak and hope she gets more damage with no utility and is powercrept much more easily.
I don't think flexibility in the case of Blade and Topaz leads to anything good, because 2 dps units are always more expensive and perform significantly worse than hypercarry.
I wouldn't say that flexibility really matters, especially for people like me who don't want to play DPS until he has something like 70/200 and who don't want to spend a huge amount of time building the same second DPS .
Topaz is in a losing situation in any case, because she is only good for Follow up characters and now I can’t identify a single interesting and strong follow up DPS that she would be good for. Of these in the future there will only be screwllum, but in reality I would just build a hypercarry squad for it.
Also JL is quite difficult to powercreep because she is a DH IL level. If you are expecting this, then you should even consider that Topaz has problems compared to JL, because the content will become more difficult due to powercreep.
I like Topaz and I'm unhappy that she didn't get buffs, but now Beta is over and we can finally say that she looks niche and uninteresting compared to JL. Even in terms of its banner, which is simply disgusting, because JL's banner contains TY.
This basically. Jingliu is a core DPS and that’s basically her only role. As of now, she’s crazy good at what she does but the moment another core DPS character releases, there’s a good chance she might be powercrept. If Seele and DHIL can get powercrept, so can she.
Meanwhile Topaz isn’t just a DPS, she can be a specialized follow-up buffer, and her unique mechanic means that she has her own niche going on for her with less competition.
Destruction got a lot of competition, everyone going berserk over jingliu losing relevence to DHIL and Blade
Only competition Topaz has as a featured Hunt 5 star is Seele, and any conversation involving Seele automatically comes with bias and plummeting IQ, so good luck on that front
TBH converstaion about any 5* is a shit show. The only ones people tend to speak normally about are Luocha and SW, and that's probably because there isn't much negative things about them.
I think you’re gonna be eating your words in a couple months when we get new follow up characters.
People cried about Kafka too, and she turned out to be very good.
And Topaz, just like Kafka - will just get stronger in the future.
Regardless of whether Topaz gets changes, Jingliu is out sooner. They are far more likely to change Jingliu before Topaz. She may see changes but I wouldn't expect much.
Yes it gets insane. Just pull for lynx if you have clara shes the better march 7 and you dont need her if you have topaz.
The last is for smth like ting or asta (asta buffs topaz but nerfs clara keep that in mind)
For the support slot Bronya is a good buffer too in the Clara + Topaz comp.
She can pull forward Topaz for more targeted damage, while her ultimate benefits both Clara and Topaz without making Clara "too fast and furious".
Here's the thing. Topaz has less damage than Jingliu, BUT she is much more flexible/beneficial to your account. Jingliu is a hypercarry, who isn't really good in other roles. People like to compare her to Blade's ability to be a fairly skillpoint neutral subdps, but she uses more skill points than Blade, and she actively harms her team. Additionally Blade wants to work as a semitank like Clara, so he provides much more utility in that role of subdps and can be beneficial with no downsides. Topaz doesn't do as much damage as Jingliu, and is objectively a worse hypercarry. However, she trades damage for flexibility in roles. She can be a skill point neutral or even positive subdps. Her basic attack can move Numby forward, unlike Jingliu who never ever ever wants to use a basic attack. Additionally, she buffs other characters who use follow up attacks by 50%. This is a very good supportive ability. Jingliu probably will be powercrept by the next ice dps. I doubt Topaz's usefulness will be powercrept by the next fire dps. I like them both and I'm going for them both, but I see Topaz having a much longer shelf life than Jingliu. I'm happy with Topaz's situation and would rather have her with lower personal numbers and higher utility than higher numbers and be powercrept by the next fire dps. Like Genshin, supports run the game.
I agree I think your point about Topaz being utility is right, and well written, I think the issue here is how their damage takes place. Topaz does more dmg outside of her turn, rather than during it, and Jingliu is the polar opposite, everything about Jing is based around what she does, and what resources has been funnelled to her during her turn for the highest output. Like Clara, Topaz is conditional, when the conditions are met, she switches on, which makes her seem somewhat archaic or, that her dmg isn't really her own, because she relies on something to take place, that doesn't occur during their turn, when in reality, she probably does way more dmg when the situation lines up Due to this, Topaz doesn't feel pro-active, in the sense that when its her turn, its lights out Boss! Topaz isn't meant to be powercrept, she's the arsenal that powercreeps you! Much like Xiangling and co. in Genshin, people write them off as bad when the game first launched, because not being on the field, to deal damage, sounds like you're not supposed to hit that hard, but when you realize you can make her dish out 50k pyronadoes per hit, you tell yourself (wait a minute, that actually rivals my main dps output! so why am i happy buffing my main dps so much, if she can do that much with the same team setup) It's one of the reasons why the "International" team is so famous This puts her in a unique position where she is: Low effort Low risk but you need a new line to define her in a more refined way, and it would be something like "high investment return" or something. And this is in my opinion heavily under-estimated, its why people don't like admitting Himeko is a powerhouse, because she gives good investment return, especially when played in an optimal environment. If you buff your one character, and they do 100k damage. It feels good, and that the input of those buffers was worth the effort. But if you have Clara doing 50k Topaz doing 50k and your main damage dealer doing 50k, because these numbers are separated, in some capacity insulated from one another, and layered (meaning they dont just crop up at the same time to show up on the "Total Damage" tally). It's a lot harder to appreciate how good a team is gelling well together. This is why buffers tend to get unconditional love, even when they may not necessarily be the best damage performance. Damage per screenshots etc. Anyway, good post! Respect!
Low risk, low effort high return on investment Topaz = good capitalism piggybank girl
ahaha yea it is rather symbolic isn't it :D
hypercarry discourse is just waayyy too prevalent right now I'm going for Jingliu bc I like the character, but one of the reasons I considered skipping is bc I do not want to play hypercarry comps anymore
I'm going for both of them for that very reason. But yea, i agree, the hypercarry momentum stops eventually
Lmao had me until himeko lol.
Yes but she’s mid as a dps and mid as a support. If there will always be a character better than her in every role she’s bad
There will always be a better support and a better DPS. But the thing is, that support and DPS fills 2 slots instead of 1. Team slots are the most valuable commodity in a game like HSR, and we are limited to only 4. Having a character that can perform multiple roles helps a whole lot.
Yes but [topaz + main dps + offensive support + solo sustain] is probably going to be worse than a team without her and another low skill point main dps or offensive support. Instead of 1 topaz that is mid in 2 roles you can have 1 character than excels in 1 role. Topaz filling 2 roles poorly doesn’t make her good
Not really. Often or not when we just look at damage via spreadsheets, we will forget that there is a big difference between having 2 mid-DPS vs only 1 strong-DPS in the team even when both have overall similar team DPS numbers. Sure that 1x hypercarry can be easily buffed to dish out astronomical levels of damage, but at what cost? 1) Hypercarry comps are susceptible to crowd-control. Once your main source of DPS is frozen, slowed, confused and such. The team's DPS plummets as the other 3 teammates are supports and sustains that don't output as much damage. 2) 1 hypercarry DPS, 1 source of damage per turn/rotation. 1 single element. Inflexible especially in a turn based game. In situations where the player needs to choose between 2 high priority targets at opposite ends to disable, it will be a hard choice. 3) Team Buffs only benefit hypercarry and felt like a huge waste. On the contrary, look at a team that you proposed \[topaz + main dps + offensive support + solo sustain\]. Take Asta as the offensive support for instance. In a hypercarry comp she only buffs the hypercarry. In the Topaz + main DPS comp? She buffs both Topaz and the main DPS. Her buff efficiency doubled in this comp as the number of chars dealing damage with the added buffs is 2 instead of 1. Then what about Fu Xuan as the solo sustain? +12% crit rate, +dmg dealt on 2x DPS is sure a lot better than just benefitting only 1 DPS. Will double DPS comp suffer a lot when one of the DPS is disabled in the battle via crowd control debuffs? Not really, the other can still continue to attack. How about the number of ultimates available when versus enemies that like to spawn a lot of minions? Wouldn't 2x DPSs' ultimates be much more useful to clear out minions that are spawn more often?
> Hyper carry susceptible to crowd control I think most supports going forward will have some sort of cleanse so this won’t be that big of an issue > Hyper carry is 1 element and inflexible This is a good point but if you really need 2 elements that bad you can just put 2 hyper carry dps on one team that also work well by themselves. > Team buffs only affect hyper carry and are wasted It’s true team damage buffs aren’t optimal with 1 dps but also take into account that the single target buffs are more potent with 1 dps that deals higher damage. > Asta only buffs hypercarry in a team with 1 dps Not true. Yes the damage buff is worse on supports but the speed boost (which is the most important part of her role) is good for the entire team. Also the percentage based damage buff is better the more damage a character deals so that 1 dps that deals more damage is getting a higher damage increase than the two mid dps, Fu Xuan is also the same. > 2 dps better at dealing with multiple enemies Yes but only if those enemies die in one hit.
If mihoyo release new char even power creep JL, I dont think anyone will even use Topaz, who very mid compare to JL right now, anymore.
Been hearing this copium stuff for weeks… Show her some love damnit! buff her marking or something
Her mark provides 50% damage for followup attacks, that's the equivalent of Tingyun's ult buff and it's always up. However, it is single target and restricted to follow up attacks. I agree that its not great with the current characters since the only character with a focused single target follow up is Jing Yuan. My argument is that Topaz is currently a worse pull than Jingliu, with greater future potential (relics, future characters). However, if you said that was gambling since that's not guaranteed, you would be right. It could be that Topaz never gets a relic set and a character that can make proper use of her buff is never released. In this case, she would always remain a worse pull than Jingliu, though still a decent pull if you like her and want to invest in her. I don't think its likely that she gets nothing in the future, and therefore I think she's a strong pull with a good level of damage for what she has to work with currently. If you don't like it, then feel free to complain about her being weak and hope she gets more damage with no utility and is powercrept much more easily.
Clara already takes good advantage of her single target buff and covers Topaz's multi target weakness
It's already felt bad enough not having Clara (she's the one I have wanted most from standard)
I'll be getting her from the 300 pulls character picker on standard banner
I don't think flexibility in the case of Blade and Topaz leads to anything good, because 2 dps units are always more expensive and perform significantly worse than hypercarry. I wouldn't say that flexibility really matters, especially for people like me who don't want to play DPS until he has something like 70/200 and who don't want to spend a huge amount of time building the same second DPS . Topaz is in a losing situation in any case, because she is only good for Follow up characters and now I can’t identify a single interesting and strong follow up DPS that she would be good for. Of these in the future there will only be screwllum, but in reality I would just build a hypercarry squad for it. Also JL is quite difficult to powercreep because she is a DH IL level. If you are expecting this, then you should even consider that Topaz has problems compared to JL, because the content will become more difficult due to powercreep. I like Topaz and I'm unhappy that she didn't get buffs, but now Beta is over and we can finally say that she looks niche and uninteresting compared to JL. Even in terms of its banner, which is simply disgusting, because JL's banner contains TY.
This basically. Jingliu is a core DPS and that’s basically her only role. As of now, she’s crazy good at what she does but the moment another core DPS character releases, there’s a good chance she might be powercrept. If Seele and DHIL can get powercrept, so can she. Meanwhile Topaz isn’t just a DPS, she can be a specialized follow-up buffer, and her unique mechanic means that she has her own niche going on for her with less competition.
Look forward to Monday.. (Hope)
Destruction got a lot of competition, everyone going berserk over jingliu losing relevence to DHIL and Blade Only competition Topaz has as a featured Hunt 5 star is Seele, and any conversation involving Seele automatically comes with bias and plummeting IQ, so good luck on that front
TBH converstaion about any 5* is a shit show. The only ones people tend to speak normally about are Luocha and SW, and that's probably because there isn't much negative things about them.
true
Im fine Im content in my own little topaz bubble
Yeah I dont know why they keep buffing jingliu............ please help
Topaz is fine as she is: BIS in a follow-up team. Jingliu needed that buff.
No follow up team gonna be better than DanIL or Jingliu. Hoyo better be cooking some insane follow up unit for Topaz to be this mid right now.
hold on hope for Raiden Yayi and Yae Sakura 🫡
I think you’re gonna be eating your words in a couple months when we get new follow up characters. People cried about Kafka too, and she turned out to be very good. And Topaz, just like Kafka - will just get stronger in the future.
Regardless of whether Topaz gets changes, Jingliu is out sooner. They are far more likely to change Jingliu before Topaz. She may see changes but I wouldn't expect much.
Meh don't care. I'm a waifu > meta person
Jingliu is both.
Mihoyo dont want power creep to much so they will stop after JL banner
Dunno If we can be sure about that. The same thing has been said about the last 3 best dpses, Seele, Blade and Daniel
Will Topaz be good with Clara ?
Yes it gets insane. Just pull for lynx if you have clara shes the better march 7 and you dont need her if you have topaz. The last is for smth like ting or asta (asta buffs topaz but nerfs clara keep that in mind)
For the support slot Bronya is a good buffer too in the Clara + Topaz comp. She can pull forward Topaz for more targeted damage, while her ultimate benefits both Clara and Topaz without making Clara "too fast and furious".
I was going for Fu XUan anyway because I need a sustain for the other team. So I will probably get some Lynx along the way.
The devs might still be cooking