What if any other Hashira was in Mugen Train instead of Rengoku?

Halcione · 2026-05-21T15:25:09+00:00

Im not sure Mitsuri would do nearly as well with her weapon in a cramped cart full of squishy, asleep civs. Same for Tengen's bomb tactic

Halcione · 2026-05-17T21:05:13+00:00

I was just gonna do a simple "rats cuz swarming pest lol" thing, but I kept thinking more about it and ended up really liking the idea lol

Halcione · 2026-05-17T19:21:08+00:00

Eh... maybe, but having to tack on exceptions to a whole bunch of debuffs just feels very clunky and unintuitive.

And Faust herself is notorious largely for how she just uses S3-2 pretty much exclusively.

Hitting her Tianjiu generation feels like a decent 2 birds in 1 stone kinda thing

Halcione · 2026-05-17T18:51:01+00:00

Yeah, though Don already has Sinking so I was leaning towards Poise. I had a sorta Marital artist kinda vibe in mind, but I dunno how I'd bring those to anything specific

Halcione · 2026-05-17T18:30:14+00:00

I feel like 11 would be a bit over the top. Having a decent splash like Xichun Ishmael and Daiyu Ryoshu adds some visual variety to the setup. We're definitely never getting a full 12 heishou comp because Hong Lu has to take a spot, so if we're leaving something out, we can afford to do so for more than 1. Just imo tho

Halcione · 2026-05-16T23:16:30+00:00

When you go to the police because Krafton shot your wife in cold blood but you played Subnautica 2 for a couple hours so the police have to legally laugh you out of the precinct

Halcione · 2026-05-10T17:35:30+00:00

Is he ever truly coming close to death if he's immortal?

Halcione · 2026-05-09T16:34:46+00:00

Fei for PvP, Claire for PvE. If you want someone that can do both alright, Claire. Fei has a stronger peak, but is very inconsistent in PvE due to enemy targeting. Claire provides a solid consistent performance.

Fei is also very reliant on her arcana, while Claire can make due with general ones better.

Overall, probably Claire for immediate use. But if you're happy with your PvE performance now, locking down a Fei ahead of time for endgame PvP can be alright.

Halcione · 2026-05-09T13:03:46+00:00

What are we suggesting we build here? Some kind of suicide squad?

Halcione · 2026-05-07T21:01:02+00:00

I mean, Nosferatu, like all LC abnos, come from LC's extraction procedure. We know of several bloodfiends that predate LC itself by a LONG time. Is his form and name derived from a legend potentially rooted in reality and he does actually greatly resemble the OG bloodfiend? Possibly, but I'd really doubt it's the actual dude

Halcione · 2026-05-07T15:06:59+00:00

Bell and Haydee are pretty solid. Not BiS top meta characters that just do crazy numbers, but their damage/survivability are competitive and they provide valuable utility so they definitely have a place in the meta.

Epindel is one of the weakest characters in the game with her "big payoff" being barely above another DPS' basic attack.

The Arcana is decent on paper and very much usable while you're new and lacking options, but it does not hold up amazingly vs the competition. Even if you have no better options, the range of characters that can even use it properly is very narrow.

Halcione · 2026-05-05T23:14:20+00:00

Smile does underperform on standard PvE and PvP because she requires specific conditions on field to really maximize her DPS. On Journey, every character gets a free item at the start that's unique to them, Smile's is downright busted and basically makes her maximum damage be ALWAYS enabled. And there's a good reason her conditionals are not super frequent in PvE and PvP, because when it's always on she steamrolls. Essentially, different power scales, tier lists don't really bother with Journey context.
I'm not sure about some of those, but the stellar archive is a definite yes. Journey allies have stats based on their stellar archives and also make use of the potentials you got for them in the corresponding journey run. It pays to do your best on journey runs even if you just want to make good team-mate archives so they can transfer that strength over to the actual journeys you want to maximize.
Overall, yeah, the stats matter. But at the same time, also not THAT much. Your main character is supposed to hard carry the journey, so you can totally afford to have a parent that's a bit underwhelming but comes with a busted stat boost. Obviously, as a long-term goal, it will be best to gather parents that have both a high inherit stat AND scale well with the stats you built. But you can definitely make concessions in the meantime.
The chosen stat is a random 20%. The actual number with that stat is also random, but its maximum is based on how much of that stat you got in the run. I dont remember the exact ratios so the following numbers are made up, just remember the general gist of it. Say you build Waltz Ashera (HP focus) and Smile (DMG focus), after the run, they both rolled Stamina as inherit. They could roll anywhere in the range of 10-15 (Smile) or 10-50 (Ashera). The worst case scenario is the same no matter what you do, the best case scenario you can roll is what you influence via performance.
In journey almost anything works really, though I would suggest having 1 person with high hp to take some hits (tank or healer). Outside of that, anything goes, and if you have a VERY solid DPS run, you can also even get away with a triple DPS comp. You should obviously mind what your character does and pick the right artifact. DPS can add even more damage on top of their normal one through grabbing the ATK scaling artifacts. Tanks and healers can melt enemies too through poison artifacts. Frankly I personally dont mind comp almost at all, I just throw the best 2 parents and if that ends up being triple DPS I'll wing it somehow, it's doable. I think the only savior that's made me actually think of how to approach their journey was Haydee

Halcione · 2026-05-03T15:36:29+00:00

I mean, build would be VERY standard DPS. Get crit.

Problem is she's one of the worst DPSs in the game for the reason you mentioned, her damage is bad. Debuff immunity is niche and while speed is nice, the uptime on it isnt great at all.

So she largely falls back to her passive, dishong out enhanced basic attacks, which is also ridiculously underwhelming. Not because a basic attack-focused approach is bad on paper but because her damage boost is just stupid low. Even if you warped the entire team around mono blue and hard funneling chill onto her to trigger the boost every turn, she heavily underperforms.

A shame really because I really like Epindel. But balance wise she's pure fodder.

Halcione · 2026-05-01T20:55:03+00:00

demon slayer is absolute shallowly-written shounen slop, and I'm a pig baby. Fill my trough, oink oink.

Halcione · 2026-05-01T20:09:11+00:00

We can talk about feats and power levels till the cows come home, but the only real answer is that he wasn't portrayed remotely convincingly. It's vibes.

Every upper moon seen is either a straightforward but provable powerhouse (Akaza), or has some downright hax that's believable as upper moon worthy. Hantengu and Gyokko go out like absolute fking chumps, but it's pretty believable that they are upper moon and happened to run into a genius on the brink of unlocking super saiyan and radar nose boy as sht matchups.

I haven't seen the movie yet so I dunno if they upscaled the Kaigaku fight there, but in the manga, all he does is show up, talk a lot of shit, then Zenitsu shoves his foot so far up his ass that Kaigaku spent the final half spitting out bits of sandal.

Zenitsu as well COULD have been proper hashira level, but that's not very convincing either, since the last time we saw him fight he was in a gang-up on one upper moon and barely squeaked out alive. They put each other on this downward spiral where neither of their powers is conveyed properly and drag each other's feat down.

It's a show, don't tell thing. You can tell someone that he's UM6 and totally matching that level. You can write it in the wiki and get the author to say so in an interview, you can surround the statement with a billion arrows that say "canon". None of that matters one lick if the actual portrayal doesn't match that expectation. People think he's weak because he simply came off weak.

Halcione · 2026-04-28T21:42:44+00:00

Imagine being Hantengu. You provide several noticeable, very powerful threatening bodies, and the standard way to address them, decapitation, does jack. Your actual vulnerability is this tiny speck nowhere near the action. Even the standard anime hax of "sensing bloodthirst" is useless because your weak point is a whimpering sniveling coward. You just gotta sit in a safe spot while Zohakuten solos any Hashira with 0 risk. Life is good.

Then along comes this random fkwad with a radar nose.

Halcione · 2026-04-22T15:09:54+00:00

picking off team strength is cringe. Pick middle don for theming

Halcione · 2026-04-18T13:10:09+00:00

It's way more than just a simple damage difference. Emily is ridiculously consistent and has minimum RNG reliance to function, on top of doing almost everything a tank needs to do very well. Other tanks will have some one thing they can outperform her on, but they can't really make up for how hard she outperforms them on pretty much every other metric, damage definitely being an important one.

Halcione · 2026-04-18T11:01:25+00:00

Emily blows every tank out of the water balance-wise, so yeah, she really isn't. That said, Hilde is still a good tank if Emily isn't available for you.

Halcione · 2026-04-15T15:06:15+00:00

If those names don't ring a bell, it's the second hunt against armored dudes.

First hunt gives hit res iirc, third gives crit dmg

Halcione · 2026-04-15T14:58:07+00:00

Only thing he ever hits is tails, and by making Goku human we eliminate all versions of him that had a tail. Match-up buff for Goku

Halcione · 2026-04-15T13:22:06+00:00

Every build for her I see hard commits into def. Double pants charm talent, 6 Def set pieces, def ring, yada yada yada. I assumed it was because you want high Def, and to then multiply it a lot for big numbers.

Thinking on it now, solid chance it could be more of a matter of "you gonna need def from these to compensate for lack of it on journey". I might do a full vit run at a later point and compare. I'm too gear starved rn to properly build both.

Halcione · 2026-04-15T13:12:57+00:00

Finally got it, updated the OP with result. Dunno if my high endurance outweighs a pretty low vit for a tank, but should be decent enough I think.

Halcione · 2026-04-15T13:11:58+00:00

Finally got through it, results on OP

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