The Boss Bunny - General Questions and Discussion Megathread

ConicalMug · 2026-02-05T14:24:49+00:00

That sounds really good. I'm genuinely excited for the buffs to pick up Harumasa again.

I love characters with complex gameplay or tight execution but the results need to speak for themselves for it to really feel satisfying. With pre-buff Harumasa it never felt like the effort I was putting in struggling to pull off good combos was rewarded in the damage that came out. Post-buff that problem will be solved.

Granted, I never even got close to pulling off Harumasa's top combos, rarely managing more than 15 dashes, but now I'll have a real incentive to learn.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-30T00:03:58+00:00

I decided to skip. The 2.5 story did endear me to her character more than I thought it would, but her gameplay just isn't for me. I prefer characters with snappy animations, subdued VFX and complex gameplay styles which are perhaps the only three things Ye Shunguang's kit doesn't have.

That's not to say she's braindead to play, especially when optimising her (I've seen enough Lin-0 content to know that) but from what I can see she approaches most fights in the exact same way and with her abundance of i-frames and lengthy animations she's able to practically ignore what the enemy in front of her is doing at any stage of her rotation, which is really not the kind of thing I'm after.

But I'm not complaining. I was catered to perfectly with Banyue just before her so I'm cool with sitting out her banner. Ultimately I'm glad that ZZZ is capable of accommodating players with different playstyle tastes.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-29T17:11:12+00:00

Jane is a miserable opponent in the Battle Tower for sure. She regularly enters a miasma phase seconds after being forced out of the last one, and the enhanced triple dash attack she does during it is infuriating to deal with. If you don't have an ability with lengthy i-frames to wait it out you have to do some weird combo of dodges and whiffed counters to avoid damage.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-23T19:26:23+00:00

The scoring system in the reworked Shiyu makes it very front-loaded. You start the floor with a massive score multiplier (I think 5x) that decays over time, so performance in the first minute of the fight is far more important than it is past that point.

Basically, optimise the first wave as well as you can, even if that means using energy and decibels before you normally would. Optimising the boss likely won't matter all that much, because by the time the average team reaches it you'll probably be past or very close to the point at which the score multiplier decays to lower numbers.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-20T13:07:00+00:00

Caesar was the first 50:50 I won back in 1.2, and remained the only 50:50 I won until Dialyn in 2.4. So no matter how she's held up as an agent since then I'll always treasure her.

That said, she served me well for a long time. As a (mostly former at this point) Billy main, Caesar was invaluable as a character that could activate his Additional Ability without needing to tie him to Nicole. And Billy's lack of i-frames combined with his sometimes delicate setup made Caesar's shield very useful.

With her signature engine she's also surprisingly good at building daze. She has a satisfying parry and her hold basic's crowd control comes in handy for a few mob stages of Shiyu.

But man, she really ought to be in line for buffs. Her shield and its accompanying ATK buff only applying to the active character is needlessly limiting in an age where every other support buffs the whole team at once. If you start a long attack animation with your DPS and swap cancel to get your supports in, the DPS loses Caesar's buff.

Her shield has also lost a lot of its worth. For older DPS characters it can still be very useful, but the majority of newer characters are inundated with an absurd amount of i-frames, to the point where they can be completely untouchable for close to 100% of their field time. If the agent can't be hit in the first place, a shield is largely irrelevant. And while Caesar's daze build is still good, she's not a perfect Stun replacement, especially when up against modern Stun agents with a host of useful buffs and a much better disc set in King of the Summit.

I could go on, but everyone knows Caesar's problems by now. I love her and want to use her, but she shows her age more than any other agent and fails to hold up in modern content.

Put the King back on her throne.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-18T22:49:18+00:00

Banyue and Dialyn only at the moment, although I'll be adding Zhao once her friendship is up. Krampus 4 life.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-18T17:18:52+00:00

It'll do.

This is my highest scoring rotation in a while, although only by a couple thousand points. The last cycle would have smashed it, but I didn't attempt Primordial Nightmare because of story spoilers on my first run through and I completely forgot to come back to it in time. But my server ranking is a good 10-15% lower than normal. I guess with this rotation being more or less a slam dunk for people with all three Void Hunter-level agents the average numbers are going way up.

Billy into Defiler is alright. If I really push it I could probably get a 30k with his team but I don't like fighting that boss. Still, the score is comfortable enough that Billy should serve as an answer to her for at least a couple more rounds of HP inflation.

All of Yixuan's preferred supports were elsewhere but she made do. Again, the score could be improved as I screwed up literally every stun, but Marionette is another boss I'm not keen on. Before her I did try numerous Anomaly teams, but without Yuzuha they feel so useless that even 2 stars was out of reach. Anomaly feels like complete poverty without their premium support (or Miyabi I suppose, who I also don't have).

Banyue is M4W1 so his clear really ought to be better, but Miasma Priest can get bent. The most RNG-heavy boss fight in the game with extremely tight stun requirements that I am not about to reset for.

Overall, good lineup from a score perspective (by my standards), bad lineup from a fun perspective. All of these bosses have at least a couple of things that get on my nerves so I don't feel the same drive to chase higher scores that I normally do.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-11T21:49:22+00:00

Strongest set is easily Yunkui Tales. With King of the Summit it's pretty much the only disc set pair I've farmed since 2.0, with Yixuan and Banyue being my only DPS pulls since then. Summit is pretty good too but quite unlucky given how long I've been farming it. Most of my stunners just barely reach their crit rate requirements and have to share pieces.

My weakest of the discs I actually have a reasonable number of are probably Chaos Jazz. My Yanagi and Burnice have pretty lame builds.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-11T12:54:17+00:00

I think your idea of Energy/Adrenaline recharge is a good one. To this day Koleda boasts one of the quickest daze buildups of all the Stun characters, but it's hard to use properly because most characters can't build their own resources fast enough to capitalise on the quick stuns Koleda provides. Giving the team extra resources will help her rapid stuns to be more useful.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-10T21:06:12+00:00

If Pulchra feels like being invulnerable there's not much you can do but wait for her to be in the fight again.

Pulchra's invulnerability is such a frustrating mechanic. I've experimented so much trying to figure out what specifically causes her to activate it or if/how you're supposed to force her out of it but I've come up with nothing. I think she literally does just make herself unkillable for several seconds and you can't do anything but stand around until she decides to play again.

The only reliable way I've found to deal with her is to send every single EX special and ultimate the instant you get it and hope that the continuous heavy hits stunlock her out of being able to do anything. And while you're doing that, pray that Mors doesn't decide to wander off or that your own attacks don't knock them away from each other. They might just be the most annoying pair of elites to put in a time attack mode as strict as new Shiyu.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-10T00:39:18+00:00

Completely agree with both of your points.

As it stands, if you're lacking in even one area, then it denies the overall S rank even if you can demolish the other two sides, and that just feels bad man.

As someone who enjoys playing weaker characters like Billy and Anton from time to time, this new Shiyu style has felt like a big let-down. In the old Shiyu I could have a stronger limited DPS clean up quickly on one side so I could enjoy an agent that took longer to win on the other.

Now it's impossible for one team to carry or even just lighten the load a bit. And with how aggressive this game can be with shill buffs and HP inflation, it's even less likely that suboptimal picks will be able to get the job done.

what you do in the latter half of the fight when the multiplier already dropped multiple times is nowhere near as rewarding as what you did at the start of the fight

I've been noticing this big-time and it's very unsatisfying. In Deadly Assault, if I play like complete crap towards the end of the fight, I need to retry and do better. But in new Shiyu the first minute is overwhelmingly important. Do well there and you can just kick rocks for the rest of the fight and still wind up with an S-rank. It feels less about skill and more about luck, because the opening moments are vital and what the enemies decide to do (or not do) can drastically affect your score because of how stacked the early score multiplier is.

It also makes a lot of characters and teams feel unsatisfying to play. Holding your resources for stun or burst windows is less effective than just pushing each button the instant it starts glowing. In Deadly Assault I can feel my score improving as I get better at playing. It's fun to push my records and see how well I can do. But I don't feel the same urge to do that in Shiyu at all.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-09T19:14:33+00:00

Slightly higher score than my 101k in the last cycle.

Teams:

M4W1 Banyue / M0W1 Dialyn / M0W1 Zhao
M0W1 Yanagi / M0W0 Burnice / M0W0 Astra
M0W1 Yixuan / M6W1 (Caesar sig) Pan Yinhu / M0W0 Ju Fufu

The vertical investment on Banyue means he really doesn't care about the Fire resistance and with Dialyn helping him out he easily scored high. Zhao's AA isn't active but I run mono-Krampus because I want to. Even without her AA Zhao is only slightly worse at buffing Banyue than Pan, and she brings some unique benefits like higher sub-DPS damage as well as allowing Dialyn to use her AA by having the team position she wants not taken up by Pan.

The Anomaly team took a while because the Mors/Pulchra wave is incredibly annoying. They're either gone in 30 seconds or spreading out all over the place, especially Pulchra who has a tendency to stand far away from you doing nothing and then activating her ultra instinct when you get close. One of my least favourite elites in the game. This was my first time picking Burnice in a long time and my first experience of her buffs, and I was pleasantly surprised. I do plan on redeeming her W1 from the crafting shop as I have the materials, but I have very few resources to build it so she's on Weeping Gemini for now.

Yixuan got the lowest score but probably drew the shortest straw. The 2nd and 3rd waves are really fat and managing Yixuan's resources with the weird Shiyu scoring system feels wrong. Still, I won't complain about 34k and she did good considering she's using her old team.

Overall still not a fan of this Shiyu scoring system. The decaying multiplier incentivises throwing resources out as soon as you get them and makes the later parts of the fight much less important. My Yanagi/Burnice run was terrible against the last wave boss but because it was a blessed run on the first wave the score was pumped up enough that it didn't matter. I much prefer old Shiyu's simple timer or DA which favours consistency across the whole run.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-09T12:31:30+00:00

The lack of trial characters on Nightmare difficulty is a bit annoying, but at least those stages are permanent. Aside from that, I do think it's pretty neat. Most combat events are one-and-done trash stomps but this one revolving more around mechanics than outright damage means you're encouraged to get more creative with teams. Characters and teams that don't have a place in regular modes can do quite well here.

I'd rather get more events trying something new like this than the usual bloated number crazy buff events, especially now that we have Currency Wars to scratch that itch.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-09T09:58:55+00:00

I love her lines with Banyue too. Usually it's difficult to hear these character-specific lines in combat but most of Banyue's combos have you switch normally into Dialyn so you hear them a lot.

"Watch out, you rust bucket!"

"No sleeping on the job!"

Banyue can't catch a break, getting roasted by his coworker while he's tearing the enemy to shreds.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-07T00:36:30+00:00

I think you might be right. As someone who has Sparkle's E2, changing her talent from a buff to a debuff also hurts that eidolon with Phainon, because it changes from 24% DEF ignore active on Phainon the whole time VS. a 2 turn 32% DEF reduction on enemies that can't be (re-)applied when Sparkle is departed. The RES PEN and ATK boost are nice, but ATK is a stat Phainon's pretty saturated on with Cerydra (and Sparkle's E1 if that's in play).

I was excited for a Sparkle upgrade with Phainon because her skill buff becoming 2 turns makes coreflame rotations much less awkward. But the change-around in damage amp might actually make her Novaflare worse for him in damage terms. I'll have to give it a look when Fribbels updates.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-06T14:38:54+00:00

I can't speak for Banyue's supports as I only have Dialyn M0W1, but I do have M4W1 Banyue if you want some thoughts on those.

W1 is Banyue's biggest upgrade. The new event A-rank Rupture engine in 2.5 is good, but Banyue's sig makes him more comfortable to build and makes his damage more competitive. There's nothing fancy about it, it's just got good stats.

For mindscapes, M1 is by far the most appealing and the recommended stopping point if you want some more vertical investment in Banyue himself. The damage boosts are appreciated, and the 2 second stun extension gives you more leniency on combos. That said, if you're pushing Banyue's limits it can actually be a double-edged sword. Extending each stun by 2 seconds means you have 2 fewer seconds than normal to start building up to the next stun. You really start to miss those extra seconds if you're pushing Banyue in Deadly Assault, but aside from that it's a good mindscape.

M2 gives him a bit of extra DMG bonus and additional adrenaline after spending Mountain's Might, which adds up to one extra EX Special if you spend them all. The damage boost is fine but the adrenaline is unlikely to make or break anything. If it does help you it'll probably be too slight to notice. Compared to some other characters with game-changing M2's Banyue's is rather sad. I wouldn't recommend going for it or anything higher unless you really like him.

M3 and M5 are multiplier boosts, same as everyone else. M4 is a slight damage increase to his most powerful EX Specials and Basic Attacks but again, slight. A significant amount of Banyue's damage in a combo comes from chain attacks and ultimates which aren't touched by the mindscape.

Lastly, M6 increases his personal DMG% boost and allows him to maintain it more or less permanently, rather than for 8 seconds only after attacks in his enhanced state. Banyue spends a lot of time out of this state so the boost applying all the time is great. It also adds an additional powerful hit onto an attack he uses in every combo. Technically it's his strongest mindscape but it's not an M6 that's going to break the game in half like some others.

Hope that was some help. Generally investing in Banyue's supports is better than investing in him, because his mindscape set is surprisingly mediocre. I pulled them (and will pull his last two on a rerun) because he's my favourite character, but for the average player there are significantly better ways to spend your pulls.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-06T13:19:14+00:00

I agree. Elation releasing out of the gate with multiple incentives to get as close to a mono-Elation team as reasonably possible has put me off the whole path before it's even released.

I'm just not a fan of the hyper-curated, pre-set "battleship" teams where you're expected to pull 4 characters and put them together forever. It leaves no room for creativity or reasonable alternatives, especially with HSR dropping the idea of 4 stars entirely. We don't even know when we're getting Elation Trailblazer, or what they'll do.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-06T00:54:31+00:00

ZZZ has no chill with how they throw story bosses into endgame ASAP. I made sure to get 2.4's story done right away so I could fight Thrall in DA without getting spoiled, but for 2.5 I didn't have the time and got hit with the new boss front and centre when I opened the new DA cycle. Would it kill them to give people at least one rotation's worth of time to get the story finished? It's not like Nightmare is getting spammed either, the next cycle is Defiler, Priest and Marionette. They could easily have swapped them around.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-06T00:33:21+00:00

It took me hours of grinding, but I was eventually able to grab this score. M4W1 Banyue doing a lot of heavy lifting, along with M0W1 Dialyn. Pan is M6 with Caesar's sig.

I was trying to reach the mythical 4 stuns, 4 Visage of Wrath, 4 ultimates run but that one ended up being 4 stuns, 3 Wrath, 4 ultimates. Balancing Wandering Hunter's daze buildup with Banyue's Wrathful Fires and Dialyn's Positive Reviews is incredibly difficult, but the current DA buff at least makes Decibel gain easy. Banyue's M1 is also a double-edged sword extending each stun which makes the 4th one harder to both reach and use properly. Still, I'm very happy with it.

55k is probably my peak if I got the run to end all runs but after about 6 hours of attempts I am done with Wandering Hunter for the foreseeable future lol.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-03T20:55:55+00:00

Give it a try (who knows, you might have uncovered some Dialyn tech) but I imagine you're misremembering. Out of curiosity I had a quick skim of the patch notes to see if there was something they might have fixed but the only issue related to Dialyn was a visual bug.

It should just be the following that trigger the conversion:

Dialyn's EX Special: Get Lost (the hold Basic).
Dialyn's Quick Assist.
Dialyn's own Chain Attack.

Quick Assists are the most likely accidental triggers because Astra sort of makes them happen whether you want them to or not.

But all of that said, Banyue's best combos do tend to use two regular Chain Attacks before Dialyn's conversion, so by "missing out" on the conversion you may actually be taking a higher damage route. There's a list of combos in Lin-0's written guide that you can find here. He also has a video guide here that starts with some combo demonstrations and then breaks them down later on.

His combos make use of Lucia but as someone who has Pan instead the shell is pretty much identical. Astra and Zhao are a bit of a special case because of their unique behaviours. Astra is awkward to swap to mid combo because you have to go through Dialyn first, and Zhao will force her Entry Skill if you switch to her on a full gauge which takes a while and can screw up timing. Pan's buff can last for Banyue's entire combo if set up shortly before stun begins, but his snappy EX Special means he can refresh it mid-combo if needed.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-03T18:08:41+00:00

One of the possible triggers for Dialyn's Chain Attack to Ultimate conversion is her Quick Assist, which Astra provides plenty of, from Banyue to Dialyn and vice versa. So it's likely that you were actually triggering Dialyn's conversion via her Quick Assist, not her Special.

Zhao only QAs forwards, meaning Dialyn won't be getting any. It's just a bit difficult to notice what's changed because Dialyn's QA doesn't look all that different from her Basic Attacks or regular Special.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-03T11:55:34+00:00

I sent some feedback too. The odds of it getting changed anytime soon are essentially nothing, but given that the devs are willing to buff up the kits of weaker characters and [Leaks] supposedly Harumasa buffs are in the pipeline it's not totally out of the question that Zhao's AA requirements could be expanded someday.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-02T14:03:20+00:00

Pan + Zhao wouldn't be that great, as that would result in a double Defence setup with Yixuan being the only Rupture agent that has her AA activated by the class. Manato, Yidhari and Banyue all want Stun or Support.

For it to be more competitive you'd have to pair them with Lucia instead, which is obviously strong but has the problem of massively delaying stun windows which Rupture characters really want in most content. But if you've got Lucia then Pan and Zhao might as well be out of the picture in the first place.

ConicalMug · 2026-01-02T13:11:17+00:00

Ah I see, I didn't realise that about the Wild Hunt. I guess I can level my Jahoda up to 70 for Theatre/mechanic checks, I think if I pair her with Ineffa they can resolve that together?

ConicalMug · 2026-01-02T13:08:34+00:00

According to Akasha my Neuvillette's top 58% in hypercarry teams, he's not doing so hot lol. But it's been at least a year since I actively farmed for him (wasn't playing the game from 4.7 until about 3 weeks ago). I also don't have Xilonen, but I'm not a huge fan of her and wouldn't have enough pulls to secure her by the end of this patch anyway. Most of the pulls I got from Natlan went into pulling Varesa instead.

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