#i really REALLY like luochas kit

[solemntitty]

having done destruction path for the simulated universe a few times today I understand hu tao mains now

[lecliss]

I pulled Gepard in hsr finally which is awesome cuz I needed a better shielder and I was gonna get Aventurine just cuz he's preservation but now that I have Lil Geppie I'm starting to think I'll just skip Aventurine and get Argenti instead.

[nohkalikai]

see i wanna pull for blade bcs hot traumatized character w decent straightforward kit and spider lilies but i wanna pull for imbibitor lunae bcs i think his kit is very cool.

[gugu-plum]

(hsr) the description of that raturine lc is very..........................

maybe it's because i rarely play husbando-only gachas but aventurine's personality (from the lc description) is something i've never seen in a male character (in gachas) before. i think. maybe i'll try to pull him just because of that. kind of like why i grabbed ruan mei

[thingswhatareawesome]

¨

[hsr-texts]

so like everyone knows about the "Sampo is part of the Masked Fools" theory

but does anyone else have the inkling that Luocha might possibly be affiliated with them somehow?

Because the more I think about it, the more this seemed plausible to me

Within Luocha's kit, there are several uses of the word "Fool". His technique is called "Mercy of the Fool" and one of his eidolons is called "Surveyal of the Fool"

Not only that but my Otto expert friend told me that Otto is often referred to as a fool.

One of Luocha's lines goes "A moment's excitement. Nothing more."

This line is pretty ambiguous but from how I see it, it kinda lines up with the ideology of The Elation. It's said by my friends that Elation is kind of like the mix between Erudition and Nihility, which makes sense to me because in the data bank, the description for Aha says:

The elated one understands that only the wise and sentient possess the privilege of understanding joy. Neither the dusty rocks nor the distant stars can fathom the humor that life entails. A quest for formidable adversaries in games of strategy and activities to while away the time bears no winners or losers. Instead, a search for the kind of laughter that leaves one breathless, will lead to the unexpected delights that uplift the soul toward divinity

This basically means "You gotta be smart and sentient to really understand the privilege of understanding joy"

As for the Nihility part,

This is what the Fools believe in:

The Fools believe that the truth of the world is a joke, and that the ultimate meaning of all things lies in mere laughter. The universe is merciless, but joy eliminates pain, dilutes sorrow, resists nothingness, and heals wounds. Laughter, the god-given right of intelligent races, is the only answer.

With all this in mind as well as taking the "Sampo is a Masked Fool" theory into account, I wonder if being a merchant is just like a thing for them.

Anyway yeah thanks for reading my silly little theory

[e17omm]

how’d you like sam boss fight?

It looked great, but pretty easy. He had no damage that could do more than 75% of my characters health in a single turn, even with his whole kit combined. So it was just a damage sponge I couldnt lose too.

I went with my Jingliu team; FireTB, Bronya, Jingliu, Luocha.

As you may be able to tell, I really couldnt attack Sam with skill points. Jingliu doesnt consume any while in her skill, and everyone else is supportive.

So I even ignored the gimmick. I never broke him out of his fire phase. Okay maybe I did at the very end when it didnt matter anymore. I dont actually remember.

But that meant that all my healing was massively reduced.

I dont know if Luocha is just busted, but his skill still healed for like 60%.

So with all of Sam's damage being spread out, and his one ST attack being honestly pathetic. Yeah it was a very easy fight with little tension in it past his first two ultimates where I realised he didn't have the damage or moveset to threaten me at all.

He looks great though.

Wish we could have fought him with Trial Acheron and Black Swan. Hoyo is really missing out on marketing by not giving us Trial characters to use.

[noelclover]

Honkai: Star Rail or "I Ramble About Luocha, Kafka, Silver Wolf and Turn Based RPGs Then Realize It's Getting Too Long, I'm Tired and Can Only Talk About One Of Them"

From looking through Youtube comments, I realized that quite a lot of people don't seem to really understand where to look for a character's power, what makes them good/bad, the main advantages and disadvantages you'd get from rolling and building them. And since I haven't written anything and I really like talking about games, I figured why not?

This will also probably be a rather long post as I've a tendency to just ramble

A key concept people don't seem to realize is that action economy is a thing. The more turns you have, the more options you get. What this also means is that free actions have quite a lot of value to them.

Counters or Follow-Ups lead to damage and possibly Breaks ((which may or may not be the Break you want, but you'll have to strategize around that)) and heals lead to a free turn for the healer, which leads to either more healing or damage, with the latter being super important because you get skill points to use abilties.

This means that characters like Kafka, March 7th and even Herta bringing in a lot of value, albeit to varying degrees.

Which leads to a conversation involving and about Luocha. While initially I had no plans to roll for him, despite him being voiced by Katsura and being a healer, I realized, upon reading his kit, that he brought a lot of convenience and quality of life to the team, so much so that I could definitely play more aggressively and not be punished for it.

You see, Luocha is a character that would have been strong even if all he had was his conditional auto healing ((Luocha heals any ally at 50% HP or under. This can only happen once every two turns)). All Mihoyo had to do was give the man this ability and another group healing ult and he would have been a strong contender against Bailu and Natasha.

((In fact, it would have been a pretty interesting balance, with Luocha being able to auto heal and thus provide options, Bailu having a ress and Natasha bringing in a cleanse)) In their infinite wisdom, Mihoyo decided to not just give him a cleanse, they gave him his healing field, which immediately ramped up his value to stupid degrees, as now every single attack from a team mate would heal themselves and, with a quick upgrade down his Trace tree, the team. While you'd often find the use of the heal field overkill, it's absolutely great when fighting bosses such as Phantylia, with every attack healing a few hundred to a thousand of the PC's HP.

To balance this, Mihoyo gave him a damage dealing ult which also removes buffs from the enemy, including resurrection. As it's not a team wide heal you have to plan a bit around enemy bursts and line up an additional ultimate or two to make sure you get some healing as the healing field comes up.

But the sheer power of the healing and off turn healing is simply so ridiculous that it barely matters. In a game where healing costs both a Skill Point and a turn, the ability to heal without using either is simply ridiculous.

To put it into perspective:

Character A uses their turn to attack and generate a skill point. Healer uses their turn to heal one character.

This means that to perform a heal, you need to expend two turns and a skill point.

However, in the case of Luocha, this changes to

Character A uses their turn to attack and generate a skill point. Luocha ignores the wounded and attacks, generating another skill point. Character A who was wounded is hit, and is now under 50% health Luocha heals Character A

So now not only did you get a heal, you've gotten two skill points, putting you in a significantly better position than if you were using another healer. Note that this does come at the risk of having your characters hit ((sub))50% HP, which can be a bit of an iffy condition sometimes, but from my experience, it's not an issue that pops up often enough to warrant concern.

This means that you could run a skill point hungry team and mostly be finem and when manually piloting the team you'll generally have enough skill points that you don't actually have to think too hard about budgeting them.

And then you get his healing field, which is basically a super healing phase to take your whole team back to full health at little to no extra cost, which is basically the advantages of his off-turn healing on steroids.

All this makes him an absolute monster at generating skill points.

Anyways, the reason why I'm talking about Luocha is that he's a great example of things to consider when rolling for a character. Honkai: Star Rail doesn't have characters that can heal off-turn without the use of their ultimates, which take three to four turns to charge up, which means he gets a strong single target heal a turn or two quicker, which is invaluable in a pinch.

A character like Luocha opens up a lot of opportunities and gives quite a lot of quality of life.

Note that this does not mean that he's a must pull, only that a character like him brings a lot more to the table than most people seem to realize.

[notsofriendlyfriendlyreminder]

for my honkai post of the month:

WHY THE FUCK DID THEY PUT LUOCHA AND ACHERON AT THE SAME TIME IM GONNA SCREAM I REALLY NEED LUOCHA BCS HEALING BUT ACHERON IS SO MOTHER AND HER KIT LOOKS HELLA COOL AND I JUST SUMMONED FOR SPARKLE FOR MY DANG IL AND NOW I HAVE ONLY LIKE 60 WARPS AND NO PITY LORD SAVE ME

The problem also is that I know I will play luocha bcs I have blade and i need healers. On the other hand I do have build Lynx and Huohuo and partly build Natasha (+ an unbuild Bailu).

Acheron is so cool BUT the problem with her is I don't generally like nihility, those teams just never interested me so idk, if she needs a nihility team idk if I want her.

For background: been playing pretty much since launch? My main DPS are currently Dan Imbitor Lunae, Argenti and Blade. I also have a build Himeko (LOVE OF MY LIFE), Serval, Welt and recenly Herta. For supports I use mainly Sparkle and Ruan Mei and sometimes Silver Wolf and Bronya.

[prettyboykatsuki]

the hsr swarm person: im level 66 which is why im so confused why im suffering so much; using my gorjus maxed out jingyuan, luocha 6/8/8/8 + all traces unlocked, seele with an honestly really bad build and preservation mc for survival who also isnt the best

im leveling up il dan heng rn but i have NO destruction mats and even less light cone level up mats so i guess we'll be grinding

so i guess a good team then would be ildh luocha and who else??

ALSO TYSM FOR HELPING<3

take my words w a grain of salt because i've really only managed to clear level three a few times and almost beat difficulty 4 but i would assume the main issues is that you need to spend your resources on a preservation unit and debuffer / support.

for jy ESPECIALLY because he's very vulnerable to crowd control. your preservation MC is viable but i'd recommend march 7th over them (or gepard if you managed to get him). a lot of the content in swarm will want to oneshot you so damage mitigation is more important than healing in my experience.

(which makes sense because fu xuan is next and her entire kit is damage mitigation but kjfdksd i digress)

i would say with your current team, drop seele off of your team and use luocha primarily for breaking imaginary shield. replace seele with a semi-built debuffer or support (the best option for both JY and DH IL is tingyun, but pela is also very viable for both. asta also works very well but more for jy than dh il. yukong is Fine but her kit is imo tricky and shes also kind of skill point greedy)

so for team comp recc jing yuan, flex support / debuff (tingyun works best for jy and dh il, as does pela.) / preservation / shielder / luocha.

for dh il i use dh il, tingyun AND pela, and then gepard for best results

after that - it's mostly about choosing the correct path for you based on your team comps. i don't have a lot of experience with elation path in swarm but i hear it does well for jy so you'd have to try it.

you can use destruction path for dh il since you have luocha but i do not use it much since i think it works better for self-sustain characters and i find it very tricky to use. its not impossible but its kind of a suicide mission since it mostly focuses on hp consumption.

me personally, i universally always go for the preservation or remembrance paths, abundance also works very well for this. preservation is preferred for me since i have a crazy stacked gepard lmao. mix preservation with some healing or debuffing blessings and it basically keeps you alive no matter what

remembrance (aka freeze path) is also pretty good because well. it freezes everything and if something is frozen it cannot hurt you but it only works if you have someone like pela, march or geppie.

abundance works well but you have luocha so it might not be as necessary for you. still i would say the blessings for abundance in swarm are wayyy better than the normal SU. it's kind of up to you

either way, always try to go for things that contribute to your path though because once you hit max you can combine paths as well and get more bonuses. having a lot of path resonance is good.

ALSO MAKE SURE YOU READ EACH BLESSING CAREFULLY!! i know that is obvious but its a good reminder. understanding exactly what stats you have can make or break your run i find

also and this is just my personal experience but i will always choose curios over blessings if i have a chance because i think curios have better universal effects. blessings can be random but curious are imo more consistent.

i hope this helps!! i can give more advice if anyone wants specifically because clearing swarm is very dependent on ur actual account but i do pretty regularly clear difficult content in game!!!

[just-a-pole-sir]

How's the husbando team coming along?

Just got another Welt, so now I have an E2 Welt. E1 Welt is already a beast when built as a damage dealer, and his controls are so very helpful in memory of chaos. And E6 Welt looks like a god, so I welcomed that third Welt pull, only need 4 more now :p

My Jing Yuan is my biggest damage dealer at the moment, but I'm starting to think I should get him speed boots, because he's so slow.

Luocha is god tier. He's the best husbando because he carries all my other husbandos.

And I just got Blade. He doesn't make as much damage as Welt and Jing Yuan yet, because I haven't finished to build him, but it looks like he's going to surpass them, and I already love his kit and everything about him.

Caellus is not very helpful at the moment and I can't wait for him to get another class :p

And I just don't have enough husbandos for the memory of chaos. I need more! Already have my eyes on dragon form Dan Heng, but I also need a support husbando to replace Natasha for the team Luocha isn't part of...

That's why I really need Gepard to joing my harem box! Plus he's the hottest husbando...

[narwhalandchill]

ok misc stream thoughts!!!

ANYWAY livestream over nice 30 pulls of aventurine funds for anni!!!! they didnt do anything insane but honestly it was kinda cope to expect them to, ratio for free was clearly a more of a spontaneous move and hes available throughout anniversary anyway so the "another 5*" were.... a little over the top im sorry wjkjwdjkwdjk altho i wouldnt have complained obviously. a free himeko or sth couldve been on theme for the cosmodussy event but eh cant be helped

im actually glad for the skippability of the reruns 😭😭 like i have luocha n jingliu (+ LC for latter) so by skipping acheron for now im gonna have a nice time getting aventurine and most likely his LC (2/3 of his 4* LC selection is so sad tho), love that fucker hope he gets to do proper mayhem in story too. cool death talk please dont actually die yourself for real for real tho i will be sad. like i do think its based of aventurine to pull off a stunt that appears to be what we in the business might call a certified chapter 5 komaeda moment but. ahahaha nooo dont actually die youre such a funny hat man .

(also sick boss form is sick but . bootleg FL im sorry aventurine. they hit perfection already and theyre never fucking topping the galaxy cape cyclops eye beak mask drip i swear JSWJWJDKWJKDWJK but also yes me biased? in favor of that ginger? i could never)

but it seems ill have a solid time getting aventurine and saving up for now??? since i dont think im too interested in robin or boothill either. i was kinda worried topaz' rerun would be in 2.1 for IPC antics with aventurine bc i am kinda curious abt pulling for her but now its gonna be 2.2 at the earliest so. Phew

the stream ran a bit too long lmao but like overall i tend to like the dev discussions so most of it was still neat, altho downside of dev streams is that not knowing chinese i cant just like. afk and listen on headphones and go get water or something 💀💀 and they were definitely dragging stuff out on purpose no way they werent but eh. people will live its just bideo game livestream. and like these folks do hard work on the game they can yap about what they do sometimes its only right lmao

leakers public shaming session was definitely a jumpscare but i do genuinely empathize w shaoji on that one. like. ive always been one for kit + banner leaks first and foremost and story leaks just. i dont care for them much. ive had my share of looking at them occasionally but i definitely agree with the way story leaks either by themselves or when misconstrued and misinterpreted really fucking mess with the intended experience for any given story and how that must feel like shit for the writers. like if story leaks stopped happening altogether id be perfectly content. and thats just ppl who look at story leaks on purpose cuz. im not going to even begin w how like. yes the leaks subreddits and most big leakers do spoiler warnings and keep the story stuff spoilered. but then theres literally the entire rest of the internet where shit gets spread untagged and without warnings the second they are posted anywhere at all and how that fucking ruins peoples experiences. like its 1 thing to click at a spoiler tagged post knowingly and get ur experience messed up with. but when u dont even want to see it its rly fucking bad and i v well understand condemning all story leaks (even those properly flagged) just on that basis alone. but yeah actually felt bad for him there and see where he was coming from for sure, even as a consumer of leaks

ok well that sure was a wall of text. didnt expect to write that much JWJKWJKDDWJK but ya

Anyway. biggest priority is holding strong w skipping acheron as sick as her animations are but def looking forward to her teaser and the animated short. like . even with the black swan dykery. (that was a fucking jumpscare too). i dont need her rn. despite how cool she is 😭😭

& also have to say im v happy they clarified their stance on hi3rd references like. the way theyre going abt it is absolutely how it should be going. hsr by nature is more directly linked to hi3rd like honkai is in the name but its such a dumbass idea (like some fan takes out there....) to want the stories of hsr depend on another games lore. rewarding old fans with easter eggs and tidbits is perfectly fine and im even interested in seeing where they go with acherons obvious raiden situation - especially knowing theyre not about to ruin their own story with "it was hi3rd all along!" (not that i ever rly thought theyd seriously blunder that bad lmao 💀) . so yea thats neat

i think story wise im not gonna say much of my thoughts bc unfortunately i have clicked on like. a leak or four. not the major stuff i dont think but enough that commenting on stuff w some of the things im aware of in the periphery is going to tint stuff . but im still excited to see where things go!!!

AAND OH. ACTUALLY i do have one more thing . so the multiple POV thing being actually implemented is SOOOO good im so fucking happy theyre committing to it being a thing 😭😭😭 like SO many story pitfalls can be avoided by just letting it be that TB doesnt need to be fucking everywhere a major thing happens as the centerpiece of events so we as players can see it. like it gives a way of showing different events and sides of characters in a much more natural manner its sooo good that theyre implementing it already. like this alone has me in such high hopes for the story going forward. like yea theyve branched from our POV before already and in penacony as well but expanding on it even more is 100% the correct way forward

last thing: god they did jingliu so dirty in her concert illustration. WHAT is she wearing 💀💀💀anyway yeah lesgo 2.1 its cool

i lied real last thing: siobhan . siobhan i would do anything---

[baeshijima]

TWO CYCLES???? sophie pls... show builds... and also would u rec huohuo?

i gotchu nonnie 🫡 here is my hypercarry team bc honestly its kind of disgusting how jingliu casually hits 150k-400k when in her state 🧍‍♀️

(we ignore her rutilant arena set pieces bc they suck but they were all i had 🧍‍♀️)

(tingyun is the least invested in, with pela being the second least, so i should probably work on them more but they survive and do their jobs so its okay ;w;)

and as for huohuo...

biased? hell yeah i recommend her !!!

non-biased? i would say she is a good pickup if u have an atk% scaling dps who isnt skill point hungry, or have a dedicated dot team that could use a sustain which would benefit their dmg output since she buffs the teams atk !!

she is an amazing sustain/support when invested in, esp her 20% teamwide energy regen when her ult is lvl 10, along with her talent that heals & cleanses allies when they take a turn/ult if she has her stacks !! tho, i would say if u have luocha and fu xuan, then she isnt a necessity, but more of an option to have if u want to boost certain team comps (as mentioned in the above paragraph).

an additional note i would like to point out is that compared to the other abundance healers which are pretty straightforward in what they do (*cough* luocha with his comfy healing and aoe debuff strip *cough*), huohuo is easier to use for those who understand rotations and energy !! she has a different value compared to sustains like luocha and fu xuan, so it really just comes down to what u need/want ^^

despite all this though, with her banner 4* lineup along with the upcoming banners in 1.6, depending on who u have already/what stage in the game ur at (early/mid/end), then it might be worth waiting for her rerun with a better lineup. her banner is kind of in an awkward spot where she is a super good unit, but with a really bad 4* roster (glaring at the hsr devs for doing her banner so dirty as we speak ¬¬), being directly after jingliu and topazs banners, and characters like hanya in the second phase, ruan mei & dr ratio in 1.6, its more likely to skip purely bc of these factors ;w; i mean even then i would still recommend getting her—

overall, i would say if u like her character, enjoy her kit + what she brings to ur account, and arent hyperfocused on the upcoming banners, then she is most definitely a really good pull !! as for me i just wanted another sustain bc my luocha cant be my only built sustain :') (pointedly ignores my e1 gepard with his sig lightcone 🧍‍♀️)

also imo there is no powercreep between her and luocha. its just different roles and playstyles 🧍‍♀️

[ac-liveblogs]

I like HSR but the content drought there is unimaginable - 1.1 wasn't a story patch. 1.2 was very short, and now 1.3 that's coming in a few days - again, not a story patch. I suppose the equivalent for story quests are "companion missions" - they're short and to the point unlike story quests, but not enough to carry a whole patch.

The most precious thing they had was Kafka, I think - as in, the character that was supposed to hit big. ...She has the second lowest sales, after Luocha, which is a healer. So many things that went wrong - Her kit is niche, her screentime in 1.2 was insignificant and she quickly disappeared, while her companion quest can be completely skipped over by just....refusing. This is the first character they've done this for.

Not to mention how a lot of HSR players are or were genshiners and Fontaine released.

Now that is really interesting... thanks for the heads up, I didn't expect any of that! I thought for sure they'd go in really hard right from the start...

Although, if Honkai sticks to the Genshin model of only a few large story patches a year without anything to fill the gap the way Genshin does with it's exploration, world quests, etc... the drop-off may be harsher than they expected. Genshin had a lot to do after launch, and I only joined in 1.1.

Given what I know about Star Rail from osmosis, I assumed Kafka would be a big deal since she seems to be an incredibly popular character. Super interesting she sold so low if she was a character they were really banking on...

And if they're keeping Star Rail quiet on purpose to not interfere with Fontaine, doing so immediately after launch is either incredibly arrogant or incredibly stupid.

[tirsden]

The EU HSR babies have a new critter to throw at things, and I'm really liking his kit. There are upsides and downsides to it, as Moze is more or less a single-target budget Jade... plus on EU he doesn't have much gear to pick from. At least I can access his ascension boss and trace domain via early access, but I'm pushing Wardance content now so I can access his weekly boss.

America main won't pull for him as they're waiting on Blade's rerun for more eidolons and LC ranks, and have enough chars in their roster until they pull Moze naturally. F2P... has to decide, they're saving for Jing Yuan eidolons and while they could use another DPS, at most I'll throw 20 wishes or something at Kafka's banner. Pulling for a featured four-star is a fool's errand after all, and EU already lucked out with 20 pulls (they're saving for their hefty wishlist of Argenti, Luocha, and E1 Aventurine).

Update: F2P chanced 30 wishes and E6'd Luka with no sign of Moze... so, they're gonna build Punchy. I've never considered him useful or worth building before, but his personality has grown on me with this event so they get a 4-star DPS out of the deal either way.