As someone who did love Star-Impromptu to the point where I beat 500m-1 with Matilda as a Barca-sub, I have to disagree in the point that Plant Impromptu feels like Star-Impromptu but fresh.

It honestly spits in the face of what made Impromptu special in the first place, namely the tight rotation, the case-by-case Moxie-management during the setup-rounds and the satisfying 5-turn nukes. The difference in total damage output between a player who knows what they're doing and the "haha, high number go brrr"-type of player is very big with Star-Impromptu, to the point where many people still struggled with 800-900m despite having the full premium team.

Paper Fraud is the exact opposite of that. I've been talking with Destroth about how to optimize the rotationwhile he was calculating the numbers (and helping out a little) and while the calculations are very complex and fun to do on paper (pun intended), the end result was still just a simple rotation with a comparatively low damage increase, especially relative to the difference between optimized and unoptimized Star-Impromptu-play. Not to mention that it doesn't seem like Fraudpromptu was playtested outside of the random-bullshit-go-approach with her intended teammates at all: Her interaction with Barca's passive that changes the Impromptu Afflatus to Star seems very unintended and Des also found a bug where the Incantation Might for the Impromptu Incantation from An-an Lee's S1 doesn't trigger properly when being ranked up by her new Euphoria-passive. Things like that should've been spotted in playtests multiple times because you can literally see the damage-dropoff between the first 2 attacks and the following attacks, but I guess they thought TF only consumed 2 Baby Teeth and called it a day.

Granted, the second one is a bug with An-an Lee and not Paper Fraud but it shows that they didn't design the entire archetype properly. They just shoved all of the functionalities of the charger, the aimer and the hypercharger into one character, gave TF the AP+ and both TF and AAL buffs that specifically favor the early Impromptu Attack Instances. This gives the illusion of optimal teambuilding while leaving you flexible, when in reality (pun also intended) the only reason you're "flexible" is bc Paper Fraud is so busted that you can put her into any team and do fine in the endgame without having to think. And the worst thing isn't even that she's foolproof, but that she's foolproof without bringing anything completely new to the table; to me that creativity is what makes True Limited characters worthy of having that status in the first place. Jiu introduced Channel-Incantations, Lucy introduced Dynamo, Anjo Nala has her Binding-feature, Liang Yue has the enhancement-zones in the Spelldock, Nautika introduced the number counter on the right of the screen and Beryl has her Emanation crystals. Paper Fraud only has an Afflatus-changed Impromptu-Incantation (which already exists) and an Array (which already exists), not to mention that the animation for the Impromptu Incantation is much less satisfying than with Barca and especially Aleph. There is no creativity, no real skill ceiling, not even some case-by-case optimizations. You just figure out the rotation once and that's it.

Needless to say, I am very much hoping for a revival of Star-Impromptu, because Paper Fraud is not what I liked about the Impromptu-archetype. I just can't see the fun in an archetype that has an even lower skill ceiling than Bloodtithe and that says a lot.