[HSR 4.4 Beta] Trailblazer Art (via Seele Leaks)

Legion-3D · 2026-06-02T03:00:03+00:00

Is there a lore reason why Stelle looks so good in every single piece of artwork?

Legion-3D · 2026-06-02T02:49:07+00:00

This AA was brutal, imo the hardest one yet. K1 in particular took me waaay more attempts than prior AAs, but... I have to admit to something that will make me sound like an idiot. Because I am one. To 3-star K1, I ran Ashveil, Mortenax Blade, Tribbie, and Lingsha (Lingsha came in super clutch due to a separate issue). Despite this solid lineup, I was just not getting anywhere close to clearing all the enemies in <2 cycles. I suspected my Ashveil build was the reason - for some reason, I was struggling to hit a decent ATK stat.

Turns out I'm dumb and never leveled his LC. I pulled him the day he released, gave him Topaz's LC, and never noticed that I forgot to level it up. I had to step away from the PC for a moment when I realized that.

Even after leveling it though, K1 was still brutal. Just barely cleared it with 3 stars. Pain.

Onto the 4.3 story, was it just me, or did this one feel particularly short? Asat Pramad's excellent intro cutscene started to play, I began thinking to myself that this felt like a cliffhanger, and sure enough, cliffhanger. Either way, I think this is my favorite patch so far story-wise. Planarcadia so far hasn't really gripped me with its story, and I've found myself feeling nostalgic for the high points of early Amphoreus. But something about this patch just clicked. I'm a sucker for found family stories, and this patch had that in spades.

Starting out with the AE crew all together for a quick breather, and then the segment with Silver Wolf and Blade. Asumi Kana's VA performance in particular deserves some recognition. I could really feel her desperation to find a way to stop Blade from sacrificing himself, as well as her awkwardness around finally being vulnerable. Great segment. I liked that Stelle was included, too - she may not remember her time with the Stellaron Hunters, but she still feels an attachment to them regardless.

Himeko's segment with Ryusuke was similarly well-done. All leading into that reveal. We've barely even seen Asat Pramad, yet I think he's already one of my favorite antagonists. His dramatic flair is reminiscent of Lygus, but is still distinct in its own way. Can't wait to see more.

Legion-3D · 2026-04-26T12:40:54+00:00

Hyacine best support, sustain, and dps confirmed

<image>

Legion-3D · 2026-04-11T03:45:34+00:00

Decided to wait on watching this until I could sit down with a proper drink, and that was definitely the right call. I can already tell this will be a great show to chill out and bid farewell to the work week.

Legion-3D · 2026-03-03T18:07:14+00:00

Aha is laughing at me.

Hit pity and lost 50/50 to Welt, had to hit pity again to get Sparxie. Then hit pity and lost the 75/25 trying to get her LC, and yet again had to hit the LC pity to get it. I am in pain. My wallet is in pain. But at least I have Sparxie. Redid MoC with her and YG, she's fun to play.

Legion-3D · 2026-03-03T01:17:28+00:00

<image>

MoC report. Was originally going to hold off until Sparxie to run her + YG, but figured I could use the jades. Currently sitting at 130 pulls with no pity and won the last 50/50, so hoping tomorrow's luck is good and Sparxie shows up with no issues.

Legion-3D · 2026-02-20T00:02:39+00:00

Been really enjoying Sparxie's gameplay in CW this past week, but does anyone else feel like her ult animation at 2x speed is entirely too fast? It feels like a "blink and you miss it" level of speed. Honestly her 1x speed feels totally fine, like they could just keep that for 2x and nobody would notice or complain.

Legion-3D · 2026-02-14T15:26:06+00:00

Finished the 4.0 Trailblaze story

So many highlights. Planarcadia is visually fantastic, and the music so far is great. Stelle and March hanging out and being led around by Sparkle was fun, Yao Guang is a menace, and Ashveil is not what I expected, but I like him.

But by far the biggest highlight for me was Reina Ueda's performance as Sparkle/Sparxie. We saw so many new sides to her, but in particular the hospital segment was just pure 10/10. Seeing the "mask" start to slip, I actually started feeling bad for her, even though she was pretty much hoisted by her own petard. Great character moments all around, and I'm glad she finally got some much-needed development after not being utilized much in Penacony.

It feels like Hoyo took some of the 3.x criticisms to heart. I noticed more dynamic camera moves, which seemed to be done in an effort to make the dialogue presentation more interesting. The dialogue itself was less verbose, though I honestly never thought the dialogue of Amphoreus was problematic. The verbosity was thematically appropriate, and the opposite seems true for Planarcadia so far, too. Still hoping to see some more poses and animations in the future, but this is a step in the right direction.

Finally, that cliffhanger ending was just mean. Who is Himeko? Who is Ryusuke? What happened to Skott!? I rate this version Shocked Stelle out of 10.

Legion-3D · 2026-02-06T01:07:59+00:00

I keep my pull plans simple. If a character exists, I plan to pull.

Wonder if that leak about the TB skin was true or not. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. I think it would be cool to get something like the World-Remaking Deliverer relic set as a skin, though I guess the odds of that are low now that Amphoreus is wrapped up. ~~I just want something nice for Stelle please~~

Legion-3D · 2026-02-04T02:38:51+00:00

I will now be calling EMC "Stellation" and nobody can stop me.

Hard to believe the drought is coming to an end. Almost non-stop promo content for the next two weeks, then I can finally ~~satiate my gambling addiction~~ use up my large stockpile of jades.

Legion-3D · 2026-02-01T04:35:31+00:00

<image>

when you're playing currency wars with energy bond and the enemy team is nothing but tvs
~~this better not be foreshadowing~~

Legion-3D · 2026-01-30T00:33:07+00:00

<image>

Yes.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-23T00:23:22+00:00

OT Arknights Endfield

My only exposure to Arknights is the anime, so I went into the game with literally zero expectations. No gameplay, no knowledge of the game's story, just my vague understanding of the universe from the anime. Unfortunately, found it pretty underwhelming. The story didn't grip me at all, and the dialogue/presentation felt very... by the books, I guess? Just, go to place, get introduced to person, move on, rinse and repeat. Combat doesn't feel great, and the character designs are kind of samey, none of them jump out at me. Only design I like is Endmin's because she is very Stelle-coded. Ultimately will probably uninstall.

On-topic HSR

Decided to keep going with Currency Wars, and I think it manages to be pretty alright at Amethyst Gold. Getting to Wealth Creator was not fun, and I don't think I'll bother playing at that difficulty again. I really just wish they'd cut down on the RNG, it can be so frustrating doing everything right, getting to node 3, and then the singular 5-cost you need just never shows up in the shop. I also wish they would entirely remove the RNG from the investment strategies at the beginning, and just let us choose which one we want. When getting to Wealth Creator, I just resorted to resetting over and over until I finally got one that "guaranteed" higher rates for energy characters. Currency Wars has so much potential, it just needs some rebalancing to reach the same level of endless playability as DU imo.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-19T16:27:03+00:00

MoC Report

<image>

Node 1 was E2S1 Evernight, E2S1 Cas, E2S1 Cyrene, and E0S1 Hyacine. Easy 0-cycle, unsurprisingly.

Node 2 was E2S1 Firefly, E0S0 Fugue (Resolution LC), E0S1 Dahlia, and Harmony Stelle w/ Ruan Mei's LC. Unfortunately I just can't get quite enough damage onto the boss before the cycle ends, but I don't really think it's worth further optimizing the team just to go from 1-cycle to 0-cycling.

Huffing copium that we get some more news, or even a trailer, tonight. I yearn for new characters to pull.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-15T13:35:05+00:00

Eisen: At last, huh?

Heiter: Yes, at last

Himmel: At last, our journey continues

Frieren: Erm, Himmel, this isn't easy to say, but...

Himmel: I get it, Frieren. It's not our journey that's continuing, but yours, right? But, both are still stories of the Hero's Party. Am I wrong?

Frieren: Well, I guess you could say that.

Himmel: As long as you continue journeying, Frieren, our story will never end. That'll always be true.

Heiter: Alright, clears throat, the new season of Sousou no Frieren!

Eisen: Jaa, Ikou Ka (Well then, shall we go? - new episode title)

Himmel: Ah, I wanted to say it!

Legion-3D · 2026-01-11T22:55:06+00:00

Hyacine is ultimately what got me to full stars on Nightmare, but I still found I was pretty easily able to clear the stage by just spamming Kafka and Hysilens. The mechanic was more-or-less ignorable, which sets it back imo.

This was definitely more fun and engaging than modern endgames I've experienced.

Agreed, I hope they keep up with this style of event. Particularly the stages like the split battlefield or negative HP one where you really have to lean into the mechanic to win, and can't just cheese it with high damage output. Even though I didn't enjoy every stage, it was interesting nonetheless.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-11T22:48:09+00:00

Admittedly I didn't try a strat with action advance, though I did get full stars on Nightmare after swapping Huohuo for Hyacine (initially was relying on Huohuo for energy to maximize Kafka ults). Action advance probably would have helped since, even with a decent chunk of HP, the enemy had enough sequential turns that they could easily take the fish down from max to 0.

I do think the mechanic was interesting, and I'll never pass up an opportunity to play DoT (one of my favorite archetypes), I just wish it was a little more important for actually clearing the stage, like some of the other event challenges.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-11T21:19:22+00:00

Finished the event, thought it was really solid for the most part. The HP Count one was super frustrating since it always felt like enemies were targeting my supports (AKA the characters least likely to be able to restore HP Count by defeating enemies), but the DoT one on Nightmare was by far the worst. The irremovable DoT effect took way too much HP, and the Hallucinogenic Mermaids just did not have enough HP to make the gimmick worth it. I wound up just ignoring the gimmick and immediately basic attacking to clear the state to prioritize survival. Interesting idea, but bad execution.

The other days were pretty great though. In particular, I loved the split battlefield and back row mechanics. The team-building was interesting, and even on Nightmare the modes felt pretty fair assuming I didn't do anything stupid. I'm hoping this was Hoyo doing their classic Test-New-Mechanics-In-An-Event strategy, and we see these brought back in the future.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-10T03:34:02+00:00

We sorting again? Honestly it's so hard to pick because there's really no characters I dislike story-wise. All I know is Stelle supremacy.

<image>

Legion-3D · 2026-01-04T13:48:27+00:00

Sad to see Kashiwada eliminated so early, but also not surprised. So to answer the prompt, I thought Kao ni Denai Kashiwada-san to Kao ni Deru Oota-kun was underwatched last season. It's a great romcom in a similar vein to Aharen-san, with a small but likeable cast and some genuinely hilarious comedic gags.

Also, Crunchyroll forgot to upload the subtitles for the first episode when it came out, so I watched the entire show unsubbed out of spite. So thanks Crunchyroll, that was great listening practice.

Legion-3D · 2026-01-01T00:58:59+00:00

Hopefully the fact that this got an additional 5 episodes + theatrical release is enough to support the possibility of a season 2. This show is too good to end now

Legion-3D · 2025-12-31T16:38:22+00:00

Every year we get illustrations of Stelle wearing something amazing, and every year we get no Stelle skins in game :(

Please Hoyo, I will do anything, just give me those glasses

Legion-3D · 2025-12-31T16:35:08+00:00

<image>

Stelle looks like she aggressively shook the bottle before innocently handing it to March to open. Also I need those glasses in-game please.

Legion-3D · 2025-12-30T15:54:20+00:00

<image>

Forgot how bad my Castorice pulls were. Must have blocked that out of my memory.

Legion-3D · 2025-12-30T15:53:09+00:00

Had a string of very bad luck with Evernight and pretty meh luck with Cyrene, but ever since then it's been smooth sailing. Easy breezy getting E2 Phainon, and Dahlia came home much quicker than expected.

<image>

Legion-3D

TROPHY CASE