#i want her on a hyperbloom team with alhaitham SO bad

[electric-plants]

on one hand i’m clawing and biting at the walls because furina’s banner is ending and i didn’t pull for her on the other hand i am weeping tears of joy because the torture of having primogems and not spending them on her banner is over. today truly is for all the people who want furina but are dedicatedly saving their primos for something specific yall are so brave we’ll get her on her rerun soldiers o7

[gold-rhine]

anyway, if you look at free to play guides and articles, recommending 4 stars only teams, and these team don't work for you, it's not just "skill issue". tho ofc average player will not have as much practice as ppl who play this game for a living. artifacts play a huge role, if you don't have good artifacts, even broken 5 stars won't help in the abyss, at least.

but also, these guides almost always use c6 r5 characters without mentioning, and for many 4 star constellations matter SO MUCH. some characters straight up unplayable without cons.

so i wanted to go thru the list of most popular meta 4 stars and list the importance of their cons and weapons just so you can have reference if it makes sense for you to use them:

Xiangling - literally unplayable in serious abyss teams before C4. C4 gives plus 40% burst duration, at which point she's broken. She wants r5 catch or basically any 5 star spear, as long as you have like 200% er. 4 piece emblem set, no options, crit hat, pyro cup, er\em\atk sands, should have at least 100 EM overall.

Bennet - his importance con is C1, bc otherwise he either heals or gives atk buff, but most teams that want him will be ok with C0 Benny. Unless it's a nche team that relies on Benny's pyro infusion, then only C6. wants a sword with highest base attack you have. skyward blade is probably his best option bc it has er and high base atk, aquila favonia has higher atk, but you'll need more er, for f2p options sumeru craftable sword is best option, but if your team REALLY struggles with energy, you can use favonius sword. benny's weapon needs to be max level.

Xingqiu - C0 feels so bad to play, bc it's so hard to get enough energy off-field. Teams that want him like pyro carries with vape or hyperbloom will still be playable, but just feel kinda bad. Starts feeling ok at C2, at C6 becomes comparable to C0 Yelan. Wants sacrificial sword R5 or at least R3, if your sac sword is lower than r3, it's better to use favonius sword. 4 piece emblem set or 4 piece noblesse set if used with hypercarries like arle who cares about atk. use ER sands if you can't get enough energy to burst off cool down.

Fischl - pretty good at C0, but truly broken at C6. Wants stringless bow or 5 star bows. 4 piece golden troupe best option, but can work with thundering fury or combos of 2 pieces

Yao Yao - actual free to play hero, already great at C0, her cons basically don't matter. Event hp healer staff or just fav lance is good. if used in a team with majority dendro damage like alhaitham or tighnari, etc, then use deepwood, if used to just proc aggravate with like clorinde\keqing\yae\raiden + fischl, then 4 piece instructor is her best option.

Sucrose - becomes playable at C1. When guides say she's as good as kazuha, they mean C6, and it's a lie anyway, bc what they mean is that on paper damage calculations are similar. But in actual play her grouping is nowhere near kazuha and her burst actually ungroups enemies when unlucky. Wants sacrificial fragments and 4 piece vv with EM stats, no options.

Kuki - another f2p hero and hyperbloom goddess, good at C0, great at C2, immortal at C6. get as much EM as you can on her, should be near 1000, weapon usually iron sting. doesnt care about ER or anything else, minmax EM

Chevreuse - already good at C0 if you have strong pyro or electro carries. at C6 pretty broken. ONLY good in teams with only pyro and electro, nothing else, both need to be there. wants HP stats.

Beidou - good against 2+ enemies, but CANNOT trigger hyperbloom. Can be okay at C0, good at C4, pretty good at C6.

Thoma - for burgeon can use C0.

Layla - decent shield only after C2.

Noelle - usually shown in Furina teams as a driver, becomes decent at C6.

[tofufei]

to elaborate...

- Ayato's skill has normal ICD so he's not applying enough hydro for Xiangling to vape her hits consistently. Added to that, both Ayato and Xiangling have very high ER requirements in the team so you can't invest as many subs into offensive stats. Kazuha also cannot double swirl. Nothing that makes vape good works with Ayato. Pls stop suggesting Ayato vape. That's his only!! bad team, I don't know why people keep suggesting it. Play him in literally anything else. Soup, taser, hyperbloom, mono hydro, even as a bloom or freeze bot he's better!! I'm on my knees.

- DW/GD is almost never resin efficient to farm and I am sick of people saying that it is. Unless you're playing spread Nahida who does want good DW subs, basically noone cares about DW subs. All you need is the 4DW set effect and you'll have a full set relatively quickly. Afterwards, you have basically no reason to stay in that domain anymore as noone has 4GD as their uncontested BiS set. Characters who want 4GD (Alhaitham, Yae Miko, Tighnari, Cyno) have 2pc/2pc or alternative options that are basically as good as 4GD even assuming same substat quality bc you don't get full uptime on 4GD! Chances are, your 2pc/2pc sets have even better subs and you get them passively from other sources. 4WT is just as good for Tighnari. For many, further DW pieces are just as useless as DPC pieces, so if you're building a hyperbloom character, FOPL is *right there*. No reason not to farm it unless you lucked out and already got an onset GD EM goblet/circlet. Stop believing the lie that 4GD pieces are universally good!!!! They're not. "Ohh but if 4GD isn't good, the 2pc can still be used!" Yes but also no. Do you know what other 2pc set has EM? FOPL and WT ffs

- Characters relying on their bursts feel ass to play in overworld. Even if your Xiangling has Bennett and enough ER subs, she feels terrible in overworld!! Look me in the eye and tell me you, spiral abyss clearer, enjoy Xiangling in overworld. So stop suggesting to new players that they should definitely build Xiangling when they don’t have Bennett and don't have the artifacts for enough ER. They're not doing spiral abyss, they're not even halfway through the main story.

- Conversely, stop discouraging people from pulling for Wanderer...?? They didn’t ask about spiral abyss. Most of the content happens in overworld. You spend more time a day travelling to the spot where the daily commissions take place than you spend actually doing the commissions.

- Wanderer optimal combo debate is insane. People who have never looked at his motion values just keep parrotting one specific Youtuber or each other. After he made another video where he probably revised his statement, people are finally coming around and saying that N2C is his most universal combo. Everyone is so eager to point out to other people who're not yet enlightened that actually N2C is generally better than CA spam. What they're forgetting is the context. If the question is "are there every any cases where CA spam is better than NA spam or N2C" then the answer is yes! In situations where your CAs can hit multiple enemies but your NAs cannot. I am answering a question about specific cases!!!!!! Do Not Cite the Deep Magic to me. I have been advocating AGAINST CA spam and for N2C since fucking December 2022 where you didn't even know what a N2C even was😭 And if we're going to be all smartass about this then ackshually you should play N3N2D or N2CN2D bc did you know that dash combos are actually a DPS gain even at c0? I know your beloved youtuber said it is always a DPS loss but He's Wrong.

i need to be less into genshin impact. i have so many strong opinions on irrelevant stuff💀

[gold-rhine]

like, to think about it from evil company design perspective, the purpose of limitations can't be to force ppl to pull. bc they give you new characters currently on the banner as trial like they did with maulani and kinich, they give u several trial characters. and most ppl will have enough characters on account to play, these characters just won't be LEVELED. this is not forcing u to pull, its forcing u to waste resources on characters you didnt want to build. and now have to just to fill arbitrary number

so i can only surmise is that the purpose is kind of like combat events with trial characters, to give you a try of a character and make u want to pull them. but like the difference is that combat events are always tailored to the strengths of the specific character, if its kazuha trial, they will give u like 20 slimes so you just woosh them together, if its kinich trial, they will give u burning team and one or two bulky enemies, etc

bc genshin philosophy for making new characters is to diversify them into niches to prevent powercreep as much as possible, like, kinich didnt powercreep alhaitham bc alhaitham is better in spread and hyperbloom, but kinich is doing as much or more damage in burning, etc.

but what this specialization-focused approach means is that characters often require very specific teams and conditions to feel good, except few generalists like neuvi or nahida, but you dont need to work to sell them. for most characters random teams in random fights will make them feel HORRIBLE. like, i never want to pull mualani after i tried her in imaginarium, it was clunkier than ganyu melt.

this is a game where team synergy is one of the most important factors both bc of reactions and character kits, and they made a mode that fucking makes it impossible to have good teams. this mode is a fucking coop simulator, where there are like xiao, nahida, shenhe on the team and you need to pick a character to make this somehow clear domain, all while thinking i could do this in 20 seconds if i had my own team. at least in coop you're doing this to help other ppl, here it's like. play a bad team just because? also like why are they encouraging casual players who already not great in understanding team synergies and importance of them to throw whatever characters together, bc like hey its an official endgame mode, obviously just picking random shit is how u're supposed to play?

playing thru imaginarium and getting mad bc it could've been good if it wasn't bad :\