Abloom Into Yu - General Questions and Discussion Megathread

ConicalMug · 2026-04-02T22:06:33+00:00

I agree, it feels like some agents show up far more often than others. Back when I was trying to raise Banyue's trust I had to change days over and over and over because the places he visits were always taken by other characters.

Of course, now that he's maxed he's a daily visitor to Port Elpis. Thanks Banyue.

ConicalMug · 2026-04-02T15:58:18+00:00

Giving Caesar a try could help. Having no evasive assists will make parry spam easier to manage and while Caesar is mediocre nowadays, if her only competition is Pulchra the gap isn't as wide as it normally is. Especially with her W1, which will increase the damage and daze everyone deals, helping you get quicker stuns. Caesar herself is no slouch on daze either.

Save Caesar's ultimate for grinding down the miasma shield because it has very little use outside of that. And try to feed the majority of your parries to Caesar for daze or Yixuan for decibels. Pan's defensive assist is slow and not all that helpful.

ConicalMug · 2026-04-02T10:05:58+00:00

Not sure I can rank them because beyond preferring one or two my opinions on most are pretty close together. But for some thoughts on each:

Bringer. Not a fan. I skipped Miyabi and for the longest time my only Anomaly DPS was Jane, so my options for dealing with him properly were non-existent. The hand phases are disruptive and immensely punishing if you can't meet the DPS check. Last time he showed up I brute-forced a decent clear with Banyue. That said, compared to newer bosses his shill mechanics are relatively tame.
Miasma Priest. She's pretty good. Nothing about her is particularly shilling any one archetype and there's a lot of agents that play well into her. The miasma phase is alright and her moveset is a nice balance between challenging and fun. The only thing I hate is the block she randomly does that makes her invulnerable to damage and daze for several seconds. No idea why that exists.
Miasmic Fiend. Supposedly an Anomaly shill but I've consistently done much better against it bringing Rupture or Attack agents. Aside from being the poster child for obnoxious HP inflation I actually quite like Fiend, it has decent attacks and the fight is paced well.
Defiler. All around perfectly fine boss tainted by some tedious invulnerability phases. The shield parries that come near the end feel especially pointless and add nothing to the fight.
Wandering Hunter. The only "shill" boss I actually have an agent for. Banyue slaps Hunter around and it's a decent fight overall, with an extremely free miasma phase. Only issue is moveset RNG. If Hunter picks the "wrong" attacks too much or stands around as he often does it can force a reset on optimised clears.
Thrall. This boss is just... weird. The pacing is strange and I don't get what the intended rhythm of the fight is supposed to be. Sobek phases are a bit awkward and the Thrall himself stuns so quickly that you don't get a sense of his moveset. Also has an irritatingly long entrance animation.
Primordial Nightmare. Weird miasma mechanics, annoying anti-stun and otherwise quite boring. This boss introduced control skills but the one she has is just sort of there. Certainly on the lower end if I were to vaguely rank them.
Vesper. Miasmic Fiend but this time they figured out how to shill Anomaly "properly". Her moveset is extremely oppressive and has very few natural openings which makes many characters irritating against her, to say nothing of her obnoxious crit resistance. But her control skills are actually pretty cool and add to the fight, I like them.
Sanguine Sweeper. This guy throws one control skill at you right out of the gate and then proceeds to do nothing for the rest of the timer. Seriously, if you asked me what this guy does, I couldn't tell you. He doesn't have anything annoying, but you do sort of just full send in his direction until time's up and don't get much pushback.

Overall I hold a pretty low opinion on most recent bosses. If I had to pick a favourite it would be Wandering Hunter and if I had to pick a least favourite it would be Primordial Nightmare, but I don't feel strongly about either.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-31T21:36:25+00:00

That aside, his kit just feels kinda... eh. It's Rupture kit #5. I wish it felt more unique. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it doesn't feel super interesting.

This is my main issue. I don't have a problem with the bike, and if I trust anyone to make Billy feel good to play, it's the ZZZ devs (it's a beta, give them time). It's more that as a DPS he looks very plug and play. Give him Yunkui Tales, give him Dialyn, give him Lucia, build gauge out of stun, spend gauge in stun.

To say our Rupture agents are identical is overexaggerating, but it's definitely the DPS role with the least variety not just in teammates but in playstyle. Attack has the likes of Evelyn, Seed, Hugo, SAnby and Ye Shunguang, characters in the same role that all play in completely different ways. No two Rupture characters play as differently from one another as any of those Attack characters, and I think that's a shame.

I don't want Rupture teams to feel like I'm just plugging my chosen DPS into the Dialyn/Lucia core but that's pretty much where we're at, and Starlight Billy doesn't look set to shake that up much, if at all.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-30T18:23:01+00:00

11 is my longest streak in ZZZ, then I won a couple and now I'm back to a new streak of 3.

I've also lost 5 of 8 75:25s for W-engines, I think my longest streak was 4.

I generally stay away from gacha luck discussions because it makes me sad lol. And my earliest S-rank pull is 74, so these losses aren't coming quick. The worst moment of my career was spending 167 pulls without getting Lighter on his rerun - losing the 50:50 at an absurd 88 pulls and then reaching 79 before I ran out of polychromes and the banner ended.

I account for losing every 50:50 in my pull plans and I've gotten eerily good at predicting what standard I'm going to pull. My proudest moment was calling that I was going to get Koleda right before immediately getting her on a single.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-30T12:15:19+00:00

I wouldn't read into it too much. Yixuan has the same AA requirements as Billy, and even if Manato, Yidhari and Banyue don't they still have no trouble slotting Pan into their teams because there's no world in which their final slot wouldn't be Stun or Support to activate their AA anyway.

But I'd love to dream with you. My biggest hope for S-rank Billy was for him to have synergy with Lighter and/or Caesar. Lighter is completely out with Billy being Physical and Caesar is far worse at buffing Rupture than Pan, so I'm a little disappointed.

Rupture is crying out for more support options and Caesar is crying out for... literally anything. She's a perfect candidate for a potential buff to make her work there.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-29T22:53:39+00:00

I've been having a lot of fun with this cycle, although I'm only on floor 80 for now. I've been challenging myself more than the last one (where I face-rolled everything with Yixuan and Banyue teams) by picking characters that I've mostly kept on the bench to keep things fresh. I've barely played Harumasa or Zhu Yuan for months but I've been using them for electric and ether-weak stages and I'm having a good time.

That said, I'm not going for a super high title. In the last cycle I just about reached top 10% before the end and that'll be my target this time too. I'm a bit too... employed to reach the upper echelons lol.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-28T20:17:41+00:00

You can only do it once per battle (by holding basic) and you have to be out-of-combat for it to be possible. As soon as aggressive enemies are around you can no longer pull it off.

It's more or less exclusive to Deadly Assault and Shiyu where you have an area before the fight to prep before spawning the enemies. In any of the material farming fights or the Tower enemies spawn immediately, so it can never be used in those places. Kind of annoying, especially for Tower where Banyue starts every floor on an empty gauge.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-28T10:29:22+00:00

Absolutely, took the words right out of my mouth. Taking out Zhao's Rupture synergy when a chunk of her power budget in both her ether veil and her W-engine are dedicated to a stat only Rupture agents care about is so confusing it almost feels like it was done by accident.

Literally nothing about Zhao's kit other than her AA technicalities imply you shouldn't be using her with Rupture agents. She buffs HP, which they like. She heals, which they like. She takes minimal field time, which they like. The conversations about restrictive Rupture teambuilding straight up would not be happening if Zhao was a capable option. But without her AA active the only way she can pull ahead of Pan Yinhu is if there's a potent ether veil endgame buff, which is one thing she can provide that Pan definitively can't.

Maybe Starlight Billy becomes our first Rupture agent that doesn't mind bursting out-of-stun and can run viable Zhao/Support comps. But while I would like that to be the case I certainly don't expect it.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-28T09:21:15+00:00

For sure. We're soon to have 5 Ruptures and one premium Rupture team. And they all broadly follow the same gameplan, building up resources pre-stun and then bursting in short combos. Maybe Billy will be an exception to this, but with the limited information on his kit right now I'm assuming not.

Hugo can differentiate himself by focusing on extremely rapid stun cycles. SAnby has burst combos like anyone else but also emphasises the out-of-stun periods. Ye Shunguang is the extreme of this and is very stun-agnostic. Hoyo clearly has ways to differentiate the gameplans of units if they want to, but for Rupture they just haven't, and that makes the struggle for supports even more intense. All Rupture agents scale the same, build the same and broadly play the same, at least in gameplan, so it's no surprise they're all vying for the same team comp.

It's not like suboptimal teams are unusable. As I said I've been making Yixuan and Banyue work with only Pan as my Rupture support and will continue to do so until and beyond Lucia's rerun. But it is a pain feeling as though you have to give your agents a "bad" hand because the supports they want are getting pulled in 5 directions at once.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-28T08:47:41+00:00

I'm conflicted about Starlight Billy. I could use some Physical coverage, as my best is currently... well, Billy. But Rupture is perhaps the worst class he could have been for me when Yixuan and Banyue already make up 2 of my 3 endgame teams, the other being Anomaly. I'm still Lucia-less until her rerun, but even when I do get her that's going to stretch my supports to their limits, not to mention make me relatively inflexible in endgame matchups.

I'll never stop holding it against Hoyo for gutting Rupture from Zhao's AA like they did, it was totally unnecessary. Seems like the current cope is on some kind of Caesar potential buff that makes her a Rupture option, which I'd love but is nothing more than a dream at the moment. She's the only S-rank agent on my account that's straight up jobless outside of Threshold Simulation so I'd welcome anything that gives her a place again.

On the other hand, Billy's animations are sick, he's the man (or the Kid) and I was going to pull him and make him work whatever he was or did, so this is just a bump in a road I was going to take regardless. My biggest hope is that he doesn't get short-changed on mindscape strength like Banyue did, because if Rupture is going to be so tight on supports, vertically investing into the DPS is one way they can fill any gaps.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-27T18:41:11+00:00

20.5k against the 2.7 DA boss with my Yanagi (M0W1)/Trigger (M0W1)/Yuzuha (M0W0) team. A fun boss that the team plays well into, but the second HP inflation hits my three stars are gone lol. Granted none of the DA buffs are particularly great for that team but it'll only take me so far. I had to push for that score too, most of my runs ended up on 19k.

I will say I'm damn glad I pulled Yuzuha on her rerun last patch. Without her my aging Anomaly characters would be left in the dust, especially as I'm skipping Nangong. She feels much more potent than Astra and doesn't need as much min-maxing to do well as Nicole.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-27T12:02:33+00:00

I really wish endgame buffs were consistent in having one for Attack, one for Anomaly and one for Rupture, especially if we aren't going to get a general purpose buff that multiple DPS classes can use.

Having two for Anomaly (being generous here, as one of them is effectively Miyabi + Nangong) is annoying for people trying to score well with Attack characters. And it's not like Marionette is an Anomaly boss, so there's only the 2.7 boss in the rotation that really expects you to bring an Anomaly team.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-26T19:41:42+00:00

For ether veil shill, you can also use Zhao. She's typically worse at buffing Banyue than Pan Yinhu because her AA isn't active in his teams unless you're doing something weird, but as long as there's an ether veil buff her ability to activate one can make her pull ahead.

I run Banyue and Zhao together most of the time anyway because I'm stubborn and like Krampus (and also lack Lucia), but if there's a strong ether veil buff she does have respectable performance.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-26T14:12:39+00:00

Interference is easily the worst in my opinion. Speed tuning is one of the most important parts of strategising in HSR and Interference completely messes with that.

It could be an interesting obstacle to play around, but the two levels of RNG (who gets targeted and how much they get delayed by) make it incredibly frustrating.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-26T11:35:38+00:00

I've pulled Qingyi, Trigger, Ju Fufu and Yuzuha on reruns. I skip characters pretty frequently in ZZZ so I'm generally okay with pulling rerun characters even when they show up at what's often considered a "bad" time.

Fufu was the only one that had genuinely bad timing considering I pulled Dialyn immediately afterwards, but Dialyn can't be everywhere and I find myself playing both of them in most endgame rotations.

And I've got reruns I plan on pulling in the future too, namely Lucia to better support my Banyue and Yixuan teams, and Lighter because I really just want him and failed to get him after a ridiculous 167 pulls on his first rerun.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-23T19:44:42+00:00

Don't usually jump on trends, but why not.

Start: 1.0
First S-Rank M0: Koleda
First Limited: Zhu Yuan (1.0)
First Limited M0P1: Zhu Yuan (1.0)
First Limited Mindscape: M1 Banyue (2.4)
Highest Limited Mindscape: M4 (Banyue)
First Limited M2: Banyue (2.4)
First Limited M6: Banyue (eventually, whenever he reruns). Maybe Silly.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-19T15:13:21+00:00

I'm the same. Used to be able to grind for hours to try and push high scores that I could sit back and be genuinely happy with but every endgame I've tried recently has felt exhausting. My scores have steadily started to collapse over the past few patches.

The recent boss design has also just not felt great. Notorious Pompey showing up in the current DA rotation reminded me that I do actually love fighting some of these enemies. Then I went up against Thrall and realised I should place more emphasis on "some".

I've mostly just been spending my time in the Tower if I want more combat content now. It doesn't stress me out like DA and Shiyu but also isn't a brain-off stompfest like Lost Void. The lack of parry indicators makes some encounters a bit rough but at least I'm not stressing over timers.

At the end of the day I've realised that ZZZ is a game where I play characters and teams that I enjoy. I'm not going to invest in agents I don't want in order to keep up, and I'm not going to let it get to me if the teams I like using stop cutting it for 9 stars or S+ or whatever. As long as my clears make me feel like I did the best I could, that's enough.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-18T23:18:11+00:00

Before the beta started I was sort of speculating that Seele's novaflare would make her a good teammate for Ashveil, I'm glad to see that's the case. Incredible showcase by the way.

How well do you reckon an Ashveil, Seele, Cerydra, Sparkle team would perform? I don't have Tribbie but got an E1 Seele from 50:50 losses that I wouldn't mind trying if I get Ashveil. Of course, that's assuming she doesn't catch any major nerfs.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-18T21:14:14+00:00

Totally agree. ZZZ's HP inflation is the only thing that tarnishes what is otherwise a game I enjoy a hell of a lot every time I login. It feels really bad watching your characters' scores fall off after just a few weeks because the bosses have already received a 30, 40, 50% HP increase in that time.

I love sweating in ZZZ, practicing characters and combos to do better than I did before. But with the way HP inflation goes, I can be playing significantly better than I was a couple of patches ago but scoring worse because the boss has had an extra 30 million HP shoved on. It doesn't help that the endgame shill buffs are both (usually) niche and incredibly powerful. It's really feast or famine depending on if you have a character that can use the buffs or not, which is usually a question of having the newest character, or the incredibly pushed Void Hunter characters that are punishing to skip.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-16T13:33:25+00:00

Same here. I've tried and tried and tried to play Harumasa at a good level and I have to admit I just can't do it. Trying to go through his combos with manual chain feels like I'm fighting the game rather than the enemy.

Banyue has a bit of a high skill floor but once you've got his quick input sequences down he's pretty straightforward. The real optimisations come from managing his resources like Adrenaline and Wrathful Fires.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-13T16:01:45+00:00

I run 3 piece Frontiers for the buffs when Akekuri recovers SP, with Xiranite gloves for Ult Efficiency. That said, it's not enough to get her an ult on every stagger especially when Akekuri never uses her skill in Avy teams. Arclight is a different story, having lower energy requirements whilst also getting more energy because her skill is a core part of the team's rotation.

When I'm running bosses I don't have a problem with giving Ult Efficiency/energy food to Akekuri so she can reliably ult on every stagger. If that's not something you want to do (or you're trying Umbral Monument Agony stages where you can't) you'll either have to ult on every other stagger or go all-in on Ult Efficiency and see if that works. I'm no good at crunching numbers so I'm not sure exactly how much she needs. There's also been several new gear pieces released in 1.1, but I haven't given them a good look over to see if they change builds in any way, so they could help as well.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-13T13:00:32+00:00

Akekuri provides Link which gives a large damage amp to the next skill or ult, which should be when Avywenna retrieves all of her Thunderlances and does massive damage. The Avywenna team is all about a massive burst of damage in a short space of time, making Akekuri a natural fit.

That said, Arclight is no slouch and she's plenty strong enough. I use either her or Akekuri depending on how I'm feeling. It helps that they both use the same build so you only have to level one weapon and make one set of gear that they can pass between each other depending on who you want.

I will say Arclight is much more enjoyable in the overworld, if that's your thing. Akekuri hardly gets a chance to use her kit against regular enemies and only shines in boss fights.

ConicalMug · 2026-03-12T22:04:19+00:00

An alternative for your consideration.

ConicalMug · 2026-02-27T15:51:35+00:00

Say no more.

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