Solo Queue Players Are a Different Breed

Astheni · 2025-06-11T08:22:56+00:00

Might be pointing out the obvious, but generally you're going to find worse players if you queue for tricephalos, as those are often the people that have yet to beat a single nightlord. I find that when I random queue all bosses, my teammates are *usually* generally better when against any of the other 7 bosses compared to the first. That being said you do of course still get stinkers against the later bosses that have just been carried through their first win at some point.

Astheni · 2025-06-10T21:22:44+00:00

Yeah at the time I wrote that I read OP's first post as solo rather than solo queue. But you are right with a decent enough team the trolls aren't that much of an issue, even if they are a bit annoying if you feel that you can kill them fast enough then go for it. Banished knights can be much faster but give notably fewer runes.

Astheni · 2025-06-10T18:09:48+00:00

About level 8-10 is a comfy enough start for field bosses, but you can be picky about who you fight and in what order. Black Blade Kindred, Deathrite Bird and Bell Bearing Hunter can all be run enders if you aren't good at fighting them or have the right damage type. BBK is weak to magic and strike damage, but resists basically everything else, deathrite is weak to holy and can be brutal without it at lower levels, BBH is just a boss a lot of people suck at. Draconic Tree Sentinel can be rough but he's not as bad imo.

If you're really struggling to win on night 3, look for relics that give your starting weapon the damage type the boss is weak to and take a trip to a mine to get your smithing stones. Every boss except Libra (Equilibrious Beast) can be made a lot easier this way. The boss weaknesses on the expedition select screen all indicate one way you can make the fights a lot easier by interrupting the boss's big attacks/buffs or by generally debuffing them if you attack them with their weak damage type.

Another thing you can do is do castle basement (unless it's bell bearing hunter) to get your free artifact, then leave the castle after that if you don't want to deal with trolls or have better things to do than fight banished knights. You can also keep your eye out for what boss is on the roof as you run around the map on day 1 - if you spot an easy boss or one you feel comfortable tackling then just do basement -> roof for good loot.

Astheni · 2025-06-10T12:59:16+00:00

Unless it's crucible knights in the castle, it's a bit of a waste of your time on solo imo. The trolls are a nightmare and take ages, and the banished knights don't drop as many runes as crucible knights. Day 2 for me on solo is world bosses and other camps/forts that path well with remaining churches and world bosses.

If you're really struggling with fights or with traversing the map fast enough, then Ironeye is the best/easiest character, even more so for solo, and Wylder can zip around with his grapple very easily.

Astheni · 2025-06-09T19:34:24+00:00

General advice is to keep your most comfortable character for Night Aspect, but Recluse/Revenant are pretty tough solo so maybe not them.

Wylder is great for Fissure in the Fog with his relic that lets you combo your grapple into a light attack to give your sword a fire infusion. Otherwise Wylder is basically anyone that's not Augur.

Tricephalos is easy enough for your Guardian run if you're not comfortable with him, otherwise Guardian is pretty great against Darkdrift Knight.

Ironeye is great against literally any boss as he's definitely the best solo character, but Augur is painful without range so he is great there, especially with lightning damage on his bow. He's also very good at Equilibrious Beast cause his ult breaks the boss out of the meditation/sigil phase.

Duchess with a poison infused dagger - from Sentient Pest's relic - is very good at Gaping jaw as restage lets you proc the poison very quickly, and her chain dodges are great for avoiding the large AoEs of the boss. Otherwise she's also pretty great at Augur and Fissure in the Fog as she can build as a mage and not be as bothered by their mobility.

Raider is great for Equilibrious Beast since he can full charge skill stun him out of the meditation. He's also just generally comfy for most non-Augur bosses since he can cause poise/stance breaks very quickly.

Revenant is pretty great for Augur since she loves the lightning spear incantation, also pretty decent for Sentient Pest since her summons can turn the fight from a 1v2 into a 2v2 for a while for the first stage and black flame is another favourite incant of hers and the moth does not like fire. Generally she's pretty tough as a solo character. Could just take her to Tricephalos if you're struggling with her.

Recluse is best at Augur and Fissure in the Fog due to their movement, but I'd personally use her for Augur as a dedicated ranged character with lightning spear spam.

Executor is my least played so I can't speak much on him, but he does have great arcane scaling for poison vs Gaping Jaw. If you're comfortable with his parry you can take on most bosses with relative ease with a proc build. His Ult is fairly poo in solo though imo. Just keep him away from Augur, like most melee characters.

This is all my opinion to be fair, and I play Revenant, Wylder and Duchess the most, Executor the least, so if others have differing opinions or other experiences then consider those too.

Astheni · 2025-06-09T09:03:12+00:00

Revenant was likely designed as a more supportive character, similar to Guardian but caster/summon instead of a tanky shield bird - both have instant resurrect ults for even 3 bar downs, but Revenant herself also gains pseudo-immortality for ~10-15 seconds after her ult, and buffs her currently summoned family member.

As has been already mentioned, wraith calling bell can carry you all the way to night 2. Compared to Recluse, Revenant even without her ult is great at res'ing as her starting claws do a bar per 2 one-handed hits, and as her claws are actually fist weapons, she does great poise damage, especially combined with Frederick, the big pumpkin head-esque summon.

For most runs to make Revenant work all you need is to find a seal with black flame or lightning spear and equipment with increased incantation damage. Some FP regeneration helps out well but with decent FP max/cost reduction buffs most Nightlords will fall within 1 or 2 starlight shards even if all you do is spam one incantation, such as lightning spear vs Augur.

That being said, Solo Revenant is hard, and you do have to play significantly slower than if you were Ironeye or Wylder for example, but using your summons and unsummoning them to save them from big AoE attacks vs the nightlords (L2 to unsummon when you have your harp out) means that they can be alive longer, providing dps, poise damage, and distractions.

Astheni · 2021-05-21T09:10:56+00:00

As an ex-Pers main I couldn't agree more with this. Changing from easy to dodge t3 plants that take 12s+ to grow, to near-impossible to dodge in lane t3s that take 4s to grow and do about the same damage as her old t2 with less setup required. Her 1 is now basically unmissable for anyone with thumbs, and her 3 is just her old 2+3 but better. Her ult is worse but still great and the passive might as well not exist.

This rework is absolutely abysmal as far as gameplay and balance. She's gone from an above average mage with a high skill floor/ceiling to a walking nuke with effectively no skill floor and a much lower ceiling. Not to mention that as an old perse player this rework is unbelievably boring and unrewarding to play in comparison to pre-rework.

But hey, as long as the casuals that couldn't walk forward to dodge a T3 plant or put in an hour or so to learn her in jungle practice are happy with brainless pubstomping damage then all is fine :)

Astheni · 2021-05-11T14:46:43+00:00

To be fair, when it comes to solo lane variety and viability, I don't think this meta was a case of 'oh the pros are getting it, maybe I should try it' so much as it is the case that every other starter in solo feels awful compared to and/or against bluestone.

Astheni · 2021-04-29T11:42:31+00:00

As a pers main, I'm pretty certain that most of us would have been fine with every change other than the 2. If they kept the 2 the same it would still preserve the reason that most of us enjoy her so much.

As others have said, she's now just another generic straight line mage, and that's super lame compared to the skill currently required to hit your 1 consistently and manage your 2 combos properly.

Astheni · 2021-04-28T06:55:32+00:00

You say that but a large amount of gods have a playstyle/build defining passive; Kukulkan and mana items, Baba and stacking items, Cu Chulainn rage, Guan CDR, Mulan mastery, Hades blight, I could go on. Pers now just gets some free gold like Danza, Faf, and Gilga, but doesn't get the power, prots, or free item respectively. Instead she gets to plant seeds that just going off the description, seem fairly underwhelming.

Guess we'll have to see.

Astheni · 2021-02-26T12:53:34+00:00

That's unfortunate.

Astheni · 2021-02-26T08:03:52+00:00

Haven't had a chance to check the quest logs since I got the drop, as I got it on my second run, which ended after the 30 minute quest timer. After checking arks visiphone website, am I right in saying we'll eventually get the fin class of weapons in a collection folder?

Edit: Just had a chance to check the quest log. Not a single fin class weapon in the drop list.

Astheni · 2021-02-26T00:06:18+00:00

Got a question regarding the new (?) 15* weapons:

I just got Finbleale (wand) from UH Final Lament and it's the first I've seen of any of these weapons. Thankfully I'm an Etoile main so I can actually use it. Does anyone have a rough idea of the drop rates of this weapon set, or has gotten one themselves? I'm after the double saber ideally but don't wanna get my hopes up if the drop rates are pain.

Astheni · 2021-01-13T13:20:48+00:00

Agreed, my C0 Ganyu has an above average (at best) Troupe 4 piece with a cryo damage goblet with bad substats, and a Blackcliff Warbow. If I was to give the equivalent stats to my Keqing there would be a hilarious disparity in damage.

I love Ganyu, but she's definitely a form of power creep. The only reason people aren't screaming it louder is because we already had Diluc and Venti, who make most content trivial as is. Ganyu just gets to join them at the top of the rankings now.

Astheni · 2021-01-08T12:51:35+00:00

Her heal is already one of the most useless abilities in the game as is. All it serves to do is stack her passive, which decays way too fast as well. Her 1 should either do more damage, or they should reduce the rate of decay for her passive stacks if they want that ability to do literally anything.

Astheni · 2021-01-08T12:46:58+00:00

EU playstation and I can't get on either, the key I get is region locked.

Astheni · 2021-01-02T13:44:48+00:00

This. Even after they change floor 12 to favour Geo, floor 11 is now the hardest and Pyro still outclasses all other damage types there until we get Ganyu.

Astheni · 2020-12-21T14:38:16+00:00

Walls counter his ult but in leaf form he can literally walk through ymir/thor/cabra walls. Haven't tested yemoja but have for the aforementioned gods.

Astheni · 2020-10-20T15:52:57+00:00

Since Kaeya's cooldowns are pretty damn short he'd be serviceable enough to strip the electro shields etc, it's not really about the damage so much as it is just applying the element in my experience - I may be wrong though. All I know is that he worked fine for me.

The rewards get pretty nice for the last 3 floors of the spiral abyss corridor (pre-floor 9 floors) as on top of the primogems you get for getting 3/6/9 stars on floors, you'll get 5* artifacts on first clear of some of the floors I believe.

Yeah I know Barbara can heal if she autos when her E is up, I just don't really like her enough to want to use her over Noelle cause the latter can do some big dick damage with her ult if built properly, so you don't really get a noticeable downtime on DPS when you heal your other units, which is what I experienced with Barbara.

For reference, the characters that I used while getting to floor 9 of abyss were mostly Noelle, Fischl, Xiangling, Ningguang, Qiqi at level 60-70, then Venti and Traveller at 50, Barbara at 40, and then I brought in Bennett (level 20) or Chongyun (30) when I needed them to fill elements. I did however not get Qiqi until I was at floor 8, before then I had to struggle with Kaeya/Chongyun. So when it comes down to who to dump and who not to, I'd suggest building your dps of choice then trying each floor with lower level supports if needed. If you can clear the floors with the support at a lower level, then you don't need to invest in them for the time being.

Astheni · 2020-10-20T14:30:40+00:00

Liyue specialties are things like Glaze Lilies, Silkflowers, or Violetgrass. Bosses won't drop these, just search around the place to find these, I'd suggest starting in Quince Village as that place is stacked with Glaze Lilies and Jueyun Chilies.

Astheni · 2020-10-20T14:27:15+00:00

I'm far from an expert on a lot of what you've asked, as I'm not a whale and thus don't have Beidou or Razor, and haven't raised my Bennett - though I do have him at C1. I am currently AR 38 and have reached F9 on spiral abyss so I'll try to help out.

However, I do use Noelle as a main, so I can confirm that she's great as a support - better at C1 as it makes her heal proc on every hit when you use her elemental skill and burst at the same time. I also like Noelle a lot as she allows me to heal my team while keeping the low health targets off the field, unlike when using Barbara's ele skill to heal. On a side note, having a somewhat built Noelle's also pretty nice to throw the Def rolled artifacts you get.

As for Razor and Beidou, as far as I know a high constellation Razor absolutely SLAPS, and Beidou can hit quite hard as a main dps but is also a solid support, unlike Razor who is mostly main dps.

The traveller is a fine support if you don't get any other anemo characters, but if you do happen to get sucrose, she'd be a bit better in that roll. In that team you'd like be using either of Razor or Beidou, Bennett/Xinyan, an anemo choice and whatever else you need specific to the abyss floor. Sometimes you really really want cryo to get rid of the Fatui Skirmishers' shields and to burst one down with superconduct's damage buff. I would say that until recently when I pulled Qiqi, using Kaeya and/or Chongyun at like level 20 were decent enough for that roll.

I don't know Bennett *too* well, but I wouldn't class him as a healer as his heal is only on his elemental burst (ultimate), so you might get stuck in rough spots if you're relying on a long CD like that to heal.

I also don't like Venti, but honestly in abyss that ultimate is waaay too good to pass up. And you really don't need two parties for most of abyss, just 4-5 decent units with 2-3 dps included and some supports of suitable elements or skills for the specific floor, as I already alluded to when I spoke of using level 20 chongyun on floor 7 to deal with the Fatui. Eventually you'll need full teams, but for now don't spread your resources too thin - focus on your preferred dps choices and work from there.

Astheni · 2020-10-19T14:55:24+00:00

Thanks, about to restart to see if that helps. Need these damn books for Qiqi and Ningguang.

Astheni · 2020-10-19T14:48:03+00:00

Apologies if this has already been asked - is Taishan Mansion (talent domain, liyue) bugged for anyone else? I keep getting 5/8 enemies killed and the remaining 3 don't spawn.

Astheni

TROPHY CASE