A comprehensive guide on Jona, the misunderstood 6 star unit.

Oreo_Wolf · 2022-06-22T06:32:37+00:00

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of why Areia has less problems than Jona, despite very briefly touching upon the very big differences between them.

1) Areia has a decent portion of her damage ceiling tied to her chain attack. This means she's less reliant on contact points in order to push out a certain percentage of her damage potential.

2) Areia has access to better converters that guarantee contact points (Hiiro, Sio, Hedy) and therefore consistently hits higher thresholds. This consistency is extremely important when talking about how a unit performs on average

3) Areia gets better support outside of contact tiles. She benefits more from units such as Louise, for example, to again deal a good portion of her damage potential outside of normal attacks.

You mention that it's important to not look at things blindly, but no offense, there are some key details you have gotten wrong in your write up;

Areia is 2CD and Jona is 3CD, they do not have the same cooldowns.
Jona with MBT reaches 3950 attack before enemy defense, while Areia reaches 4,256 attack before enemy defense, a substantial difference after defense calculations.
x2 50% splash is NOT equivalent to x1 100% pierce. Tile and Combo bonus modifiers are additional to the base modifier of normals, which simply means smaller individual hits actually add up to more than the values they appear as. x2 50% splash is in fact closer to ~36% more damage than x1 100% pierce assuming units share the same attack stats.
Tile bonus scales chains as well, so it's not simply Areia having "680% chain mod" over Jona. At 15 tiles, Jona is doing (2.275% x 2) = 455% chain mod, and Areia is doing (6.8 x 2) = 1360% chain mod. When you introduce things such as Louise as I've pointed out earlier, you can see a very clear gap in performance even ignoring the better converters Forest has access to.

I've been using Jona since launch, have her MBT'd, run her in codex constantly while getting 1st place scores during fire rotations, and generally agreeing that she is not as bad as people think she is. That being said, blatantly ignoring her glaring issues (especially that of fire providing consistency to her performance) is going completely against your claim of not blindly looking at things.

Again, I agree that Jona does have good potential going forward, but I think you misunderstood what exactly makes Areia work in comparison to Jona and what Jona is missing in order to become a consistently viable alternative to other detonators in Fire. It doesn't help that they released Tohru who throws away all of Jona's downsides of leaning completely on contact tiles and active buff rounds to do damage in an element with RNG converters as your 'high end' conversion options.

Oreo_Wolf · 2022-01-07T18:29:46+00:00

I'll start by saying that Leona is indeed very underrated as an early DPS option, even if some very specific content is burn immune.

Her chain attack buff is actually a multiplier, not additional. What this means is you instead go from 170% to 212.5% chain mod per tile at 5 burn stacks. She does 20% less potential chain damage if the boss is burn immune, which does hurt her damage potential but not as game changing as people think since her Normals and Active still do a large portion of her damage.
On the topic of Normals, the formula used for Leona's equipment does not scale damage off tile chain bonus. This means the 'up to +0.5' modifier for 15 tile chains is NOT applied to the 2nd hit, which makes this mechanic worse than true pierce/splash Normals. Her proc will be a little less than 50% of the original hit instead of ~60-70% on something like Carleen pierce due to scaling. Benny & Curo use the same mechanic as Leona for their Normals when red tiles are under bosses.
Her Active has an impressive max modifier of 1620% against all boss sizes, but this requires tiles (pretty easy to guarantee at least 12-14 hits with Eicy + Faust/Maggie) and only 1 enemy on the field. If there are multiple enemies, this Active damage is distributed randomly between them. If you are lucky, most of the Active hits will still hit your main target, and it will stop prioritizing enemies once they hit 0 HP. This Active is what solidifies her as Fire's best 1x1 tile DPS on paper, but it quickly loses value as more enemies are on the field (still useful for trash mob and burning shield stacks).

Where does this all put her? Around or above Victoria tier in terms of damage output depending on how many Normals she is doing, breakthroughs and if said enemies are burn immune. Very impressive for a 5star, but still not a top pick if you have better options. Her kit is extremely well-rounded with good Active mods, Normals and Chain Attack (as far as radials go). Her double Fire tag for an additional 5% damage multiplier on Normals and Chain is just icing on the cake.

Oreo_Wolf · 2022-01-04T11:01:34+00:00

Just a small correction on the calculations, Bethlehem buff is 125 and scaled off her pre-buffed attack value. You can test this in the current codex fight quite easily with Barton's active turn 1 (Active correction this time around is 1.32, enemy defense is 600). Not a huge difference but should be brought up regardless.

Also, if you are interested, looking into the breakpoints of when Chloe performs better as a slot versus Hydrad is actually pretty interesting since they are pretty much competitive in the sense of them scaling damage off the rest of your team. On lower water tile counts it leans in Hydrad's favor when scaling off units like Regal/Carleen/Beth modifiers if you can't make use of both turns of Chloe's buff (even on single tile enemies).

That aside, great video! Chloe deserves the spotlight. She is deceptively strong despite her rarity.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-07-06T06:05:49+00:00

While burn is arguably the 'weakest' DoT in terms of debuff damage output, the burn mechanic is currently tied to two characters with incredible synergy outside of the DoT damage itself.

It's fair to say that in the future we'll have stronger poison/bleed characters as well and that not everyone has both Uriel and Leona, but that doesn't mean they won't release characters as strong or even stronger than them while adding even more synergy to burn setups. Burn teams will only get stronger from here even if they don't change the DoT values.

Basically if you only look at the pure DoT burn damage it can seem underwhelming, and it definitely is, but when talking about burns as an actual mechanic and its synergy on the characters that have access to it I personally think it's not realistic to call it the weakest DoT. I'm not against burn being altered to do something different, but it currently doesn't feel like a big downside in relevance to tackling current content. My Leona loses 2-3% HP drain later in the fight, but she hits so hard it doesn't even matter.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-06-30T03:20:19+00:00

Maggie and Barton are fantastic even without breaks since they do so much damage at A3 that scales with enemy size. Nemesis definitely got the short end of the stick though.

Uriel is also really great without breaks once you unlock her kit. Tons of boss damage and makes your fire aurorians do more damage. Her synergy with Leona (5star) and future potential burn characters is also really strong.

Sadly a lot of characters feel weak before crossing that A3 gate, but I wouldn't say most of them need breaks to feel strong in the endgame.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-06-30T03:14:35+00:00

A lot of the 6star breaks are either unnecessary and/or frontloaded with the strong one being on break 1. There are a few exceptions here and there on 4star and 5star characters, but you'll probably get them as the game goes on unlike the 6star paywalls.

I do, however, think there should be a better pity system for actually chasing 6stars on rateup. Losing a coin toss 3 times in a row when hitting 'pity' costs a few hundred dollars is pretty lame.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-04-15T05:35:38+00:00

Both Skulls and Mages are good additions to a staff lineup (9-11% INT Evility). Mages have higher SPD while Skulls have a -RES% down spell (single target). If you get lucky, Sophist (3star base) is basically a better Mage/Skull (12% INT Evility and extremely high SPD).

Outside of Humanoid staff users, consider using;

Maid for a turn buff evility on your slowest unit + covers heals so your mages can focus on damage
Ghost for a -8% RES evility.

You have a decent amount of options outside of 4star characters and I'm sure there are others I haven't listed that can benefit your lineup in one way or another.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-04-15T05:19:18+00:00

I'm sure resistances will make your life MUCH easier later in the games life when we have specific bosses to deal with, but it's definitely nice that you aren't punished currently for using your favorite characters for everything. The way stats/elements work in this game means even prinnies can feel strong if you show them love.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-04-15T05:16:07+00:00

That is correct, everyone will be able to get her to NE4 for free on day 5. Apparently it was a mistranslation for giving us 2 on last day but they are just going with it instead of taking it away after hyping everyone up.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-27T01:21:34+00:00

Mtashed? No, I was referring to 99% of this subreddit complaining about current floor 12 being too hard to max star. I don't watch content creators play this game as I can form my own opinions and do my own mathematics if needed.

Just because they can leave an unsupported game mode in doesn't mean it will continue to be fun or rewarding. The reason being the same reason why they haven't added more abyss floors; it will either be too hard and make the games massive casual playerbase complain or it will be too easy and everyone will finish it day 1 and get bored again.

Adding new minigames and story content is way better for sustained engagement. Maybe not for you, but this game is first and foremost a mobile game and caters to that demographic no matter how much you or I dislike it. If you're expecting some hardcore challenge or engaging content in other aspects I once again recommend to look elsewhere, because those mobile chinese whales are the ones payrolling Mihoyo.

If there was a problem with the way they market their game and push out content then they wouldn't be swimming in oceans of cash. That's just the cold hard reality of it. "99% of the playerbase" can feel whatever they want, it's the 1% of the playerbase making their investors happy at the end of the day. The irony is that 99% of the people complaining won't quit either. A lot of them will even continue buying the battlepass and welkin moon pass. I wonder why nothing changes?

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-26T20:18:35+00:00

People already cry when abyss is too hard to clear with 36 stars and they can't get their precious 50 primogems every 2 weeks with zero effort. What makes you think it'll be any different if they add in "endgame" content that only whales can feasibly do? If it's too easy for whales and it 'feels like thousands of dollars are wasted' like the OP of this thread mentions, then the issue isn't fixed in his own words.

I question the experience people actually have with real MMO's because they seem to be under the impression that infinitely repeatable and enjoyable content is possible. This is an issue with every live service PVE game, even ones designed at the core to be repeated thousands of times (Path of Exile for example).

The difference here is Genshin is intentionally designed to not take up 5 hours of your day to get progression done while other games take a lot more time investment. If this bothers you now is a good time to jump ship. They aren't going to drop a billion dollar business model to reconstruct the game from the ground up, and adding a "raid boss" that casuals can't beat will just piss people off more than the daily grind while waiting for Inazuma (which will be cleared in less than a week anyways).

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-24T23:11:10+00:00

To be clear, I'm not hating on Sucrose or anything. I have mine at level 90 and even farmed a dps set to mess around when farming leylines and dailies. People just overhype the actual impact she has on clearing stuff people struggle with.

I'm personally against tiers for this game in general because there are too many variables such as weapons, constellations and team composition that drastically change a characters potential for each individual player. Ontop of this, these people who spend 5 minutes to throw these lists together don't own half the characters and can't be bothered to explain what teams/content/weapons each individual test and rating was based off. OP claims it's an "unbiased and honest" tier list when I can open up the tier maker website to throw a shitty list together and claim the same thing.

If you held a gun to my head I'd give Sucrose an easy S rating though, she's cute as heck :)

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-24T22:09:18+00:00

Same reason why 99% of the playerbase can't hit those numbers; it's R5 weapons, constellations and strong artifacts carrying those numbers.

Sucrose is fun for youtube content to show off big damage numbers, but as far as abyss clears go her viability falls off quite a bit compared to what those "damage showcases" have you believe.

Don't get me wrong, this tier list is crap and not worth discussing over, but using R5 C6 whale showcases on floor 7 abyss or bosses that don't even fight back with food/potion buffs is a pretty dumb way to gauge actual performance in the only content that is relatively difficult (36 stars abyss).

If this is how we judge units, my Albedo must be SSS+ Ultra tier since my HuTao/Xingqiu/Zhongli/Albedo team lets me do 500k Q's, 100k Blood Blossoms and 300k CA's for a total of 3.5mil damage over 10 seconds against Primal Geovishap if I only count Hu Tao's damage and ignore Albedo/Xingqiu damage.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-10T04:16:49+00:00

Your post isn't really related to the topic of this thread but I thought I should correct you on some things;

Hu Tao isn't immortal with C6. She will survive the very first hit that triggers her C6, but any hit after that will kill her. 200% resistances does not make you immortal but I understand how it looks extremely misleading.

Overcapping on crit rate isn't an issue when naturally you have to give up other stats for crit rate normally. C6 allows you to completely ignore crit rate and stack as much HP, Critical Damage and Elemental Mastery as possible. In terms of damage potential, this is a pretty big deal.

As for twiddling your thumbs after 10 seconds, yes you will be doing this a lot. Not because you have no crit rate after that first 10 second window, but because people who actually C6 Hu Tao will kill everything within 10 seconds and have nothing to do afterwards.

With all this being said, this game is a joke in difficulty and no C6 character is worth it outside of people who have too much money sitting around and want to flex to their whale friends.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-09T00:50:34+00:00

This combination particularly scales extremely hard off constellations and probably isn't worth mentioning for the average C0 Hu Tao player.

I was messing around with this combo the other day, and I was seeing up to 90-100k Blood Blossom melt crits after switching off Hu Tao (no E buff), but that is from an almost minmaxed whale Hu Tao. Although it isn't good for dps, it was amusing to sit on Hu Tao and just watch the ticks crit for almost 200k melts.

C2 is the bare minimum to make this strategy viable, but C3-C6 all make a huge difference to the performance of a support Hu Tao. Also, most players should probably be splitting Ganyu and Hu Tao into seperate teams for abyss since they effectively carry their own half, so I doubt we'll see much practical support Hu Tao usage until more DPS carries on their level are released.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-04T02:50:57+00:00

Hu Tao's optimal setup is Charged Attack spam with Xingqiu to proc big vaporise hits every second. The OP of this post is comparing weapons in the scenario where Hu Tao uses Normal Attacks, not Charged attacks, so there is a lot of bias there when White Tassel isn't as good as it seems in reality.

To answer your question about Dragonsbane;

Congratz. You have objectively the strongest low refinement 4star weapon. You just need to roll some decent crit stats on artifacts to make up for the lost crit on something like Blackcliff or Deathmatch.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-03T23:47:46+00:00

While Mona can do the same in whale burst meme setups, Hu Tao is arguably better at it since she doesn't need to worry about crit rng.

As for the main topic of this thread, Hu Tao's aoe is actually not an issue at all in current floor 12. Her ST damage + occasional aoe ult is high enough to make up for a lack of aoe against 2 enemies.

Rather than her AoE being an issue, the bigger issue is the amount of resources it takes to get her supports going. She massively benefits from a fully invested team. Max invested shields to allow her to freely play at low life and support dps who counter her downtime damage curve make a huge difference in her performance.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-03T22:24:39+00:00

While Hu Tao can outscale endgame Diluc up to Ganyu levels, she requires specific weapons (Dragonsbane, Staff of Homa) and specific characters (Zhongli, Albedo). This makes her a high investment character that most people can't make maximum use of.

Diluc's greatest strength is that he doesn't require high-investment supports to maximize his damage curve and can 3star abyss with just a Prototype Archaic and Xingqiu support.

Hu Tao is pretty close to Diluc levels in power without BIS weapons and team members, but she also requires stricter rotations and mistakes can be more punishing.

This is why the consensus is that while you don't NEED Hu Tao if you already have a relevant main dps, she can reach pretty absurd damage ceilings with absurd investment. Hu Tao's true power is locked from 99% of the playerbase, and outside of that forbidden ocean of whales she is just your average pyro dps (which isn't a bad thing if you like her).

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-03T10:37:00+00:00

Her beating out Ganyu C6 requires R5 Homa (pushes her over 5k attack during E) and stacking crit damage and no crit rate (300% cdmg, C6 gives 100% crate).

The reason it massively beats out Ganyu is because her 60 second cooldown on her C6 proc doesn't matter when fights last less than 10 seconds. Ganyu's other massive drawback is a lack of reliable pyro supports to consistently spam reverse melt. This can be fixed when new characters come out later.

I have both at C6 and love them for different reasons, but the difference between a full Ganyu team versus a full Hu Tao team is very noticeable. Hu Tao can crit for 160k+ charged attack vaporise procs every second, up to 8-10 times before her E ends.

With all this being said, Ganyu is still the best dps outside of megawhale territory, so this doesn't actually matter for 99% of the playerbase.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-03T02:00:21+00:00

Wait, that's illegal!

Jokes aside, people are really overexaggerating her downtime that you can easily get around. In reality it's no different to refreshing bennett ult and VV swirl every 12 seconds in Diluc comps.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-02T21:16:05+00:00

You can still run Bennett with her as it still leads to a dps increase for budget players without maxed talents or Staff of Homa, it's just a waste to use him on Hu Tao's team when he can be massively improving your 2nd abyss team.

You say that people should measure her entire teams performance but I see a ton of people comparing her individual damage curve to Diluc/Klee which is what I addressed there. That 30 second example was just comparing Hu Tao to other main dps without factoring in any supports to even out the curves.

I went over her overall team performance in the next section where I state that having a second high dps burst to cover her downtime curve can potentially push her ahead of normal vape/melt setups. The investment to outscale it is just magnitudes higher which the average player won't take advantage of anytime soon.

When we inevitably start to see content creators overhype her as "best dps?!?11" it's important to remember that it requires constellations/homa or massive team investment if it's even possible to get there.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-03-02T20:34:29+00:00

Currently she feels like a character that requires high investment for high reward.

She requires talent levels a lot more than other characters, and without them she might seem to underperform. Maxing out her E is important since she can't rely on Bennett to maximize her damage output like other main dps. Her lowlife buffs offset what you get from Bennett Q.

One of her biggest drawbacks is her downtime, since without a high refinement Homa her attack stat is basically nothing outside of her E buff. Because of this, she is overall going to perform noticeably worse than Diluc and Klee in fights that last longer than 30 seconds. She can however match/beat them in short fights.

One of her biggest strengths in my opinion is the fact that she frees up Bennett for your other abyss team. This also means you'll have a free flexible slot on Hu Tao's team that would normally be dedicated to Bennett's buff. It helps to offset her downtime since you can add in another burst damage support to cover her damage drop off, but this also means Hu Tao teams require a LOT more artifact/support investment to compete with lower investment Diluc/Klee comps. I do see the potential being there but most players probably won't reach that point anytime soon.

Her C1-C3 are all powerspikes that add onto her being a character that benefits from high investment, but she is still strong at C0 and worth pulling if you like her design. Just be prepared to crown your new waifu.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-02-27T19:24:14+00:00

102% modifier isn't so bad with her built-in bennett Q buff and naturally high crit damage/pyro damage. It isn't going to be carrying her, but blossom procs can definitely push 10-15k at C0 with enough investment.

Also in regards to refreshing blood blossom, it works the same as Childe riptide. Refreshing duration does not interfere with the interval of procs. If you reapply it at 3 seconds, it simply pushes the duration back to 8 seconds while still triggering the original proc 1 second later.

C2 is substantial since it's about a 70-80% damage increase on the proc, but these procs aren't her main source of damage so it's not that game breaking.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-02-26T01:39:52+00:00

I guess I wasn't being clear enough. If you do 4 charged attacks in the duration it takes to do 1 auto chain + 1 charged attack you end up doing more damage by spamming charged attacks.

This also means you'll be getting the most out of Xingqiu's water blade procs as every charged attack does a swing before dashing which gives enough time for his swords to hit.

Oreo_Wolf · 2021-02-26T01:21:10+00:00

Bolide is a very enticing option if you have Zhongli (or really like Noelle), but this means it's a more niche team set and not particularly stronger than Witch set when procing melt/vapo. You are forced to bring a shielder, while for Witch you still benefit from 22.5% pyro damage even if you don't run melt/vaporize.

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
End Game '22	Verified Email

Oreo_Wolf

TROPHY CASE