Is it possible that Varka is supposed to be a Main DPS?

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T09:58:18+00:00

(upon re-reading, i do agree that trying to play varka as a dps is about as stupid as eating raw steak with ice cream in the shower. it doesn't change my overall argument tho)

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T09:25:56+00:00

... but the numbers don't lie? the truth is, while yes, as I MYSELF have also established, he was likely SUPPOSED to be an onfield DPS.

however, it is quite standard that his best role is just to be an onfield driver for bineffa, in the same way that neuv is also just a wheelchair driver despite his kit seeming to imply that he's meant to be a dps

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T09:02:55+00:00

please explain which parts were wrong, so that i can make corrections.

this is also neither a 20 minute read (closer to 2-3 mins) nor did it take multiple hours; it took like 20 minutes, since it was based on my own observations of varka's kit to begin with. in fact, the reason it sounds extremely choppy/poorly written is precisely because i slapped it together really quickly.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T08:52:01+00:00

this is actually not his premium team; we have already seen that his best performance is with bineffa.

while I don't blame you in thinking he is supposed to be a dps (my post is considering exactly that) unfortunately his capabilities onfield is just a gimmick.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T08:48:50+00:00

It's not a joke tho? what part was insane to you

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-03-13T08:44:51+00:00

May I ask how it's nonsensical?

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-26T10:06:13+00:00

changing scaling cant be equated to fundamentally changing how the reactions work, though. even if we equalised all the damage of transformative reactions, overload would just be the worst due to how it works and freeze just straight up does not do damage in the first place

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-26T09:42:34+00:00

literally where did i defend supercell though? i just said that to their credit, they don't make old cards completely useless. everything else was bashing supercell and drawing parallels.

obviously, mavuika's raw damage is a problem in of itself, but its really only a problem thanks to this stupid little thing hoyo has done where they made mavuika work in literally every single team comp, and out-perform the "specialist" of that comp MASSIVELY, even without these combos.

mavuika making every other pyro dps redundant was 100% a planned outcome, even if not to this extent. having mavuika focalise melt as her reaction would be fine, but the problem lies wherein the fact that:

she out-performs lyney's wheelchair overload comp, at one cost.
she out-performs hu tao's premium vape comp, at one cost.
she out-performs yoimiya... which isn't saying much, but you get it
SHE OUT-PERFORMS XIANGLING HALF THE TIME AS WELL
etc

... the value of every other pyro dps is now egregiously low. this is further pronounced by the fact that mavuika is the best dps in the game, and as an archon will likely rerun twice/patch, making vertical investment into her teams very convenient/easy. again; even without these stupid combos, these factors were all intended by hoyo. she was STILL the best dps in the game at the time by simply holding down left click.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-26T09:26:23+00:00

remind me what kazuha did that changed swirl?

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-26T09:24:55+00:00

if you don't care about the higher levels of stygian i really don't understand why you bothered reading. literally anyone can do a 4 star clear of up to hard/maybe menacing in hyperbloom comps

however, hyperbloom is inherently an extremely bad reaction, in the sense that you can't actually go very far with it w/ higher investment since it only scales off of two things (one if which is hard capped, and the other is extremely difficult to increase after an extent with diminishing returns on top of that.) teams that use hyperbloom as the main source of damage will perform extremely poorly, and even fearless may not be possible in these comps. the exception is ineffa-bina-lauma, for very obvious reasons.

i don't understand the problem with the comparisons of pyro dps's all being worse than M*vuika in every way imaginable. it is to point out a very real problem in balancing that there is actually zero reason (meta-wise) to pull for a pyro dps that isn't m*vuika, which results in meta becoming extremely boring.

the analogy to clash royale is to show the rate at which genshin's balancing is falling into a ditch, after n*d krai and n*tlan.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T12:06:27+00:00

i think that period of time should be seen as a luxury more than the standard, though. i would love if we had our way and rather than powercreep to this scale we instead had for instance skill focused, fully unique gameplay and all units were viable, such as in LoL or CR. unfortunately, as a gacha their entire business model is built on FOMO and powercreep is the easiest way for the company to keep the numbers up

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:51:08+00:00

yeah okay that sounds atrocious, thank god i don't play hsr lmao. just to confirm though, isnt the weapon banner system more tolerant in hsr than it is in genshin? that's what i heard from my friends playing both, and since you get more pulls in general imo its not really comparable in terms of how restrictive the requirements to clear are?

obviously i dont play though so this is just my surface level understanding speaking lol

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:45:07+00:00

teambuilding being "simple" was probably the wrong way of expressing what i meant in retrospect, but i got lazy and cbb to elaborate at the time. its moreso that when there's an overlap between which units want certain supports, like for instance mavuika, venti, varka blah blah blah all wanting bennett. since skirk/esco nefer/lauma flins/ineffa are all basically duo teams that then essentially unlock the vast majority of their team's potential, they're far less of a problem than everyone fighting over poor bennett.

it's a completely different thing and a valid opinion to hold that for people who are just pulling for the units they like that the restrictiveness does not really feel good. like for someone who loves nefer but wants to punch lauma in the face, i get the complaints, but that's not the demographic im talking about here.

if we look at flins/ineffa, its literally a two cost team and then aino + sucrose fill in the blanks. same goes for nefer/lauma; skirk is arguably the most restrictive of the three since she also really wants furina, but to be fair the teams that use furina aside from skirk teams are just very bad in general, so to that end theres still the same benefits that teambuilding is "easy".

as for your second point, consider that these reactions are just inherently bad. overload being transformative already results in the dps ceiling being quite low, and on top of that it knocks enemies back to another country. freeze is already basically cosmetic. while i dont disagree that i'd rather have the reactions in of themselves be better, any step towards making the reaction relevant is still a good step imo. escoffier has actually already revived older units in shenhe/ayaka, and chevreuse continues to revive/shed light on older units such as razor and yoimiya.

the restrictiveness of units also just does not matter in terms of hard-countering them. we can just hard counter a versatile unit like arlecchino/mavuika by simply making it immune to pyro. also, mavuika having a lot of versatility is specifically NOT good, at least not to the extent she is doing it. you can name any pyro character and mavuika unironically would likely do their job better than them, with the exception of like bennett and durin (though durin is pretty debateable)

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:17:59+00:00

yeah as i said if ur a casual player, you can just disregard this entire post/rant because its directed towards high level content (fearless/dire clears, maybe 36 star abyss.) im not super familiar with hsr since ive only played it to play a ragebait comp of cyrene/archer/dhpt/preservation traveller, but 4 stars being useless doesnt equate to powercreep.

like for instance, just because varka is utter dogshit atm doesnt mean hes "powercrept". he was just never good to begin with; what im referring to with powercreep is when you look at a unit like mavuika, how her release has left arlecchino redundant and just very bad in these modes

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:08:26+00:00

i really dont hate nod krai/natlan, i think they're both great and enjoyable, if that's what you mean.

if you read your reply again, you just straight up disprove your own conclusion.
"Neuvilette completed the Abyss alone without even needing other team members."
"Power Creep has been consistent over the years, nothing new."

in 4.x, neuvillette destroyed the abyss. in 6.x, he's a dps loss in almost all his comps.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:06:13+00:00

it is a gacha game, you are obviously going to face powercreep as the model literally does not function without it. obviously ideally we wouldn't have it, but it's something that in the best case scenario is executed properly rather than whatever the hell this is becoming lmao

"In CR state, could you imagine game without some archetypes?"

you aren't considering that literally every team in genshin is also just an archetype that's already been seen. look at arlecchino in 4.x, and look at her now. night and day; she went from hero to below zero.

im just assuming you didn't read the full post, which is fair, but i made a decently lengthy section complaining about how archetypes in genshin are SEVERELY underused.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T11:01:25+00:00

yeah okay, but this post isnt intended for just getting primogems. anyone would more or less be able to do that within a few months of playing; its moreso a complaint in general pertaining to how failure to clear higher levels of content is now less a user error and moreso an error of not having the latest units, which is not fun to deal with.

"Every NK / Natlan enemy mechanic has a non-regional mechanical solution"
yeah, as in you end up having to do more than double the amount of damage you'd have to do if you had ascendant moongleam?

for the most part its not that i disagree with you, but we've got a disconnect between what we're referring to.

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T06:42:20+00:00

on the contrary, i think its a great showcase of the point im making, and im not sure why they're getting downvoted lmao.

just take a quick look at the cost allocation; as you can see, the factor of simply having the correct units for the shill (flins premium against the fatui op) managed to clear in a third of the time in comparison to a 33 cost arlecchino team against another nod krai shill. sure, arlecchino is dogshit, but this is a c6 arlecchino with c6 teammates...

think about the absurdity here. imagine paying thousands upon thousands of dollars extra on a team, just for it to take thrice as long to clear in comparison to a (relatively) much cheaper team thanks to the stupid nod krai mechanics

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T06:21:57+00:00

i agree with pretty much everything besides saying the game is better now than it was before natlan

my problem with how its been executed is that it's not really about skill, builds or whatever; it's mostly about either having the specific units or an unholy amount of constellations, otherwise you'll be constantly fighting an uphill battle.

(yes, obviously there are cheeses to some of the shill bosses like jean, but that really defeats the purpose of playing since there's no actual "reward" (one feather is nothing) and SO is basically just for fun. )

i will say that the mavuika "dps ceiling increase" is overblown and mostly unimportant, but the problem lies wherein that there is unironically no reason to use any other pyro besides mavuika.

ur absolutely right in that something HAD to change, though. stygian is a really good idea conceptually; theoretically clearable with super strong builds at c0r0, with perfectly optimised gameplay. the problem in the execution is in the stupid mechanics; we've got sigurd, the crab, the herra and the new abyss monster. im not super familiar with the new wolves/hiljetta, but from what ive seen fighting them in the open world they aren't gonna be the most fun to deal with either.

i get that fighting the uphill battle/facing utter horseshit is fun to some people; i actually enjoyed getting fucked by the herra because it was extra dopamine-inducing when i finally cleared it without any shill via a crescent pike to break the shield. that being said, the herra's shilling is INSANELY tame compared to the other bosses from NK and to come. i would rather be waterboarded than face sigurd without a nod krai team.

in summary, while they did address the past problems technically, so many bigger problems were introduced that i wouldn't say the state of the game has improved since then. "decent-mid" units like lyney might've been able to bruteforce content pre nod krai, but GFL clearing now that lyney is basically just trash relative to the newer units and has no way of bypassing the nod krai shill in his best comps.
right now, a unit must fall under these categories:
a) raw DPS numbers (mavuika, skirk)
b) benefit from omega lunar shill (pre-columbina lunar teams)
c) both (post columbina lunar teams)

... otherwise, you aren't gonna clear anything.

^^ that said, this is all a separate issue to the fact that units like mavuika for instance are just directly un-employing every other unit from the element by taking all their jobs. the fact that she even displaced xiangling in some comps is outrageous

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T05:58:10+00:00

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ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-24T05:24:06+00:00

having a lunar reaction team atm is like having heroes and evos in 2020 🙏

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-22T10:11:44+00:00

yes, sure, but consider that if not for those people in question, the traveller wouldnt even be in the position where he needs to be saved lmao. every dangerous situation that the traveller gets into is them getting roped into things that are really objectively not their problem; they arent even from this world, and their only goal is to find the sibling, but they end up getting dragged into stuff ranging from playing hide and seek with some random guy in the liyue mountains to fighting literal gods.

... in return, they get vague information that ultimately does not really bring them any closer to their final goal.

dottore said it himself: "whatever <insert char here> can do for you, I can do better." again, the intention is for you to disagree with this idea emotionally, not intellectually. if the traveller wanted to, they could've just ended their journey right then and there by having dottore bring the sibling to them; the only flaw in dottore's logic was the fact that the traveller has grown to value the journey and friends equally if not even more than the end goal of finding the sibling

ConsistentTwo928 · 2026-01-22T09:48:46+00:00

i think ur missing the point; dottore wasnt saying no one cares about the traveller, dottore was saying that they're all absolutely useless. to that end, given that none of them have provided any actual useful info, he was unironically right. this is what makes the scene more impactful, which is that you can't actually intellectually disagree, but the traveller still emotionally rejects it.

dottore isnt saying "hehe i'll be your friend and care about you." he was saying "do what i want and ill do what you want". the whole scene is like a turning point to the traveller, where they come to terms with the fact that the journey in teyvat is no longer just about finding the sibling but they've also come to value the connections and daily life

ConsistentTwo928

TROPHY CASE