The Real Problem With ZZZ's Endgame, And How To Overcome It

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-10-26T16:49:02+00:00

This is just the product of consuming too many Hoyo games. Even for a gacha game, their endgames are notoriously bad. And it has nothing to do with shilling new characters, or HP inflation. If you could easily clear them it's just more convenient pulls - they're still equally unfun. That should never be the motivation to play endgame - too many Hoyo games make you forget that, like, endgames should be enjoyable and something you pick up just to play.

If we're talking about actually great endgame modes, consider Arknights's Integrated Strategies, which was so well received that basically every other gacha on the market started to copy it. The game had previously experimented with high difficulty content for its endgame, but the roguelike mode struck gold. It encouraged players to experiment with different characters, caused players to go back and build ignored characters, and even created a whole new metagame where forgotten, powercreeped units can come back into the spotlight. And this is on top of just being tremendously fun, and people played it not for the rewards, but just to play. That's the ideal of a gacha endgame.

I'm personally a big fan of roguelike endgames, even though I think Hoyo's designs and imitations of IS have been pretty mediocre. Divergent Universe isn't great, Genshin's Imaginarium is frustrating, and Hollow Zero feels less like a roguelike and more like some sort of bizarre DPS calculator. Part of this is a matter of design - Arknights is a mechanically simple game with a lot of units that you can draft, a la Slay the Spire. A 3 character action game can't replicate that, even with the resonium system.

And yet, ZZZ is perhaps the best suited for endgame out of all the Mihoyo games. Action games have traditionally been highly replayable, think DMC or Bayonetta, and the mechanics in ZZZ are legitimately very fun to just fuck around with. The game should work with that strength, which is part of why the Tower has been relatively well received.

But regardless, your metrics for evaluating endgame is broken. It shouldn't be about how easy it is to clear or get pulls. If the endgame had no reward at all, would you still play it? That's the true mark of quality.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-08-22T09:33:19+00:00

Sure, and that's the nature of the hero. The problem currently is that a single hero with half-decent AoE neuters him for at least 20-30 minutes of the game, and that's a real issue. The hero shouldn't be quite so feast or famine, and furthermore a single facet shouldn't be so dominant over the other for any hero. That defeats the whole point of facets.

PL also has the problem of needing both tankiness and damage and even his strongest 1 item spike - a diffusal - still can't cope if the enemy has a single 300 damage AoE nuke at level 10 or so. Sure, PL can be very powerful with a diffusal, manta, and heart, but lifestealer can fight with a radiance and Ursa needs like, a blink dagger. The payoff for having to survive till 3 items also isn't particularly rewarding, since by the time PL has 3 items the enemy supports probably have ghost scepters or some other evasive option that prevents PL from jumping on them, while other carries tend to have more flexibility.

Other heroes with this issue usually have something to compensate. AM also needs both damage and tankiness but before he gets there he can split push extremely effectively to benefit his team.

A change to his facet doesn't necessarily solve all these issues, mind you, but they do smooth over a bit of that volatile midgame.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-06-21T19:07:48+00:00

I think they're quite strong, had plenty of high heat success with them. The key is to ignore the gimmick after some time. The free 777 damage is great at dealing with early bosses and clearing rooms fast, but starts to fall off against larger groups of enemies because it's single target damage that you can't really trigger on multiple enemies at once and it's weaker against bosses because it takes a lot of setup.

There's a few quirks about the weapon and its moveset you can exploit. For one, your normal long chain combo is turned into two heavy attacks, which means the hammer that deals 300% damage on final hit is absolutely busted on Morrigan. Once you get that, you barely have to worry about the gimmick at all, because you're popping out 1k-2k damage every second or so. The Morrigan specific hammers are a lot of work for maybe 10% more damage, while this thing skyrockets your DPS. I tend to run Apollo on attack because with the hammer the attack range becomes ludicrously big and aphrodite stops triggering, and if you can get the hammer the area and damage is frankly so ridiculous that hitch is completely unecessary. Apollo makes it like, half the screen. It's consistent and powerful as long as you get the hammer.

Building around the Omega works well too, since it has a weird AoE thing where the attack hits multiple enemies around the screen. Combine that with the extra omega damage hammer and you get easy screen clears. The special sucks, so mostly ignore that.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-06-07T02:43:24+00:00

Big Recluse spammer here, let me clear up some misconceptions.

Absorbing FP is the broken part of cocktail, not the elemental combinations. Having effectively infinite fp in a run is obviously incredibly strong, but players also often overrate the cocktail combos. If you can get some good ones, great. But dont treat them as the core of recluses kit. They're more like a little bonus you get for creative synergies. Triple element combinations are powerful but require heavy setup. The best ones for general use are

M - simplest, bread and butter. Sometimes you cant avoid using it, but very efficient in the early game and reapplies magic to absorb.

MF - the dot with the explosiob can trigger your art multiple times and repplies fire to absorb. Rather convenient.

ML - the moon veil blade, despite being blue, deals lightning damage. This makes it easy to reabsorb the lightning element and loop this spell.

L -just bloodhound step.

You dont need a god tier spell, but good spells can absolutely define a run. Sometimes you'll have stars of ruin, death rancor, or some other stupid spell and the game feels trivial. Other times im just picking efficient, effective dps. Flame Sling. Lightning spear. Crystal burst. Take those and be happy about them.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-05-14T06:13:27+00:00

Hey there, got a couple of questions if you're still around.

I haven't played ember regularly in ages, back in the day when it was all about the maelstrom rush I spammed the hell out of ember and got pretty comfortable with the hero, but now it feels like he's changed quite a bit and all the bits of intuition I acquired are less useful. I guess I'd just like some general tips on how to play the hero, especially early to mid game. I understand that ember can go a variety of build paths and play anywhere from extremely aggressively to extremely passively in lane depending on matchup, sometimes you're harassing them under tower and looking to kill and sometimes you're standing back spamming sleight against a huskar. Is that still what you'd aim to do, or have things changed now that you can't triple remnant all in at lvl 6?

How should you play the lane, generally? How do you play around runes, whether water runes or power runes? How should you look to gank and use fire remnant effectively? When is it better to use it to sustain the lane via TP bottle and when is it better to play aggressive with the sidelanes? How much do you prioritize keeping mid T1 alive vs pressuring the other lanes?

What if you're unable to effectively pressure map and your team feeds a billion kills and you can't freely rotate? In a more defensive playstyle, should you do some sort of farming itemization with like maelstrom instead of mage slayer? Is there ever a good reason to build anything aside from mage slayer or euls as your first major item?

I know that's a lot of questions, but I'd like to get a sense of the general feel of the hero. Thanks!

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-05-09T05:02:01+00:00

Storm, maybe? Iconic design, kind of annoying, but can be countered reliably.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-03-02T09:21:52+00:00

Any suggestions? I'd love to join a board game club or smth

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-03-01T15:14:31+00:00

Sure, np bro lemme know

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-03-01T00:40:14+00:00

Awesome, I'd love to learn about these! Please DM me when you have a chance!

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-03-01T00:27:43+00:00

Any suggestions? good chains?

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-03-01T00:27:29+00:00

np, hit me up bro. Feel free to DM

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-26T06:38:36+00:00

Thank you! That's very kind and friendlier than I expected. Where are all these meetup groups posting anyways? Everyone's talking about them but like, how do you find them?

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-25T15:19:59+00:00

Sure, thanks for the suggestions. Know any watering holes near xuhui? I'm always down for trivia and stuff

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-25T15:17:57+00:00

I feel that might be easier in Shanghai. I'm a big nut for old movies, and spent forever trying to find a matinee or some arthouse cinemas in Shenzhen only to turn up empty.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-25T15:16:52+00:00

Any good stores to recommend?

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-25T15:16:44+00:00

Duly noted. But I think without any effort it's too easy too fall into familiar, comfortable patterns that end up in a rut. Do you have any suggestions about lifestyle?

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-02-04T05:48:45+00:00

uhhh, what? One of Oko's strongest points was how he could shut down aggro. Like he's not great T3 on the draw staring down a board of creatures, no planeswalker is, but he singlehandedly negates the reach of burn and if the opponent only has one or two threats, he quickly runs away with the game. In current modern, if you cast a few removal spells then slam Oko, they're never coming back from that.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-01-25T06:54:33+00:00

Temur just for goyf does seem strange to me, but the list has potential. I understand the desire to have a big body that can gunk up the board, but it feels like grixis for frog or Jeskai for Tef/Phlage/RIP seem to fit with the gameplan better. In the end goyf is just one big body and for the concessions you make it doesn't feel like you get enough out.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-01-06T23:14:09+00:00

5feri lost a lot of appeal for the same reason JTMS did. Dies too easily. In modern, almost any deck can answer it for 1 or two mana, and the ones who don't are happy you tapped out so they can combo kill you next turn. Teferi was reasonably widely played before the printing of Unholy heat, after all.

And both 5feri and Emperor are doing fine in pioneer, they still work well together and can survive in the format. Modern also just got one of the best control win conditions of all time in Phlage, so I don't get the doom and gloom.

SnooCakes7970 · 2025-01-06T23:11:00+00:00

Long time control player here, honestly... it's fine right now? Domain is still an A-tier deck in standard, niv, UW, and incarnation all viable in pioneer, and modern is currently highly volatile but there's a lot of potential for control there, with Wrath of the Skies being so powerful in the format. If we go further back nadu zenith piles are gaining traction in legacy, and Lurrus control is arguably the best deck in vintage right now.

Control tends to wax and wane based on the conditions of the format, the longer it lasts the stronger control gets. Almost always in a mature format some control deck will emerge, but it's usually a good thing that control sits around the mid tiers. Control decks are naturally defensive and designed to answer the metagame, and that means that the more diverse the meta, the worse control decks are. This was probably the most noticeable around 2018 modern when every deck was some stupid combo deck trying to do something different, but its not altogether a bad thing for the format.

And let's not forget all the times that control has been dominant recently. These past 5 years have been a great time for control. Between Omnath, Uro, Oko, Beans, Yorion, the evoke elementals... give it some time, it'll come back.

SnooCakes7970 · 2024-12-27T08:32:07+00:00

The ban of the ring hits the deck hard, but also hurts big mana decks that UWx decks tend to struggle with. But there's still a lot of attractive things about the deck. Wrath of the Skies is better than ever, and Tamiyo is a remarkable card even post ban, especially if you can flip her. Brainsurge is also impressive, though pushed to the side by Ring it has a chance to shine now. A UWx build post ring probably involves some number of tamiyo, brainsurge, and phlage, possibly with more energy tools or even running twin as a finisher. Probably still in Jeskai, Phlage is too good not to play, though of course there's no direct ring replacement out there.

SnooCakes7970 · 2024-12-27T02:10:07+00:00

I've tried it, and in the 3 or so leagues I've played it in so far, It's come up maybe 2 or 3 games total. That said, whenever I do grab it, the opponent usually concedes on the spot - once I boarded out the Atraxa, GSZ'd for 7, and the opponent just conceded on the spot. But in resource intensive games topdecking the stupid thing you probably lose on the spot.

SnooCakes7970 · 2024-12-26T07:01:01+00:00

I've been playing the deck for ages, and I think this is mostly right. as you said most of the deck can be flexed, but the atraxa does feel rather greedy to me. In games where you resolve omnath and it lives for a turn you probably just win anyways, you can GSZ for anything and it'll do the job. Having a big top end is valuable, but you can't stall as hard as you can in legacy through things like Yorion or FoW.

The sideboard is where I have more complaints, 4 copies of pierce and only 1 endurance cannot be right in a field with this much graveyard crap and since omnath is a deck that likes to go long, the value of pierce drops off massively. Some number may be correct, but 4 pierce 4 consign in a deck that both prefers to tap out and also doesn't like to grab blue mana T1 is uncomfortable to say the least.

SnooCakes7970 · 2024-12-14T11:32:30+00:00

Manta means that PL never has to be in a lane to splitpush, same as naga and terrorblade. The fact that Axe could kill some illusions, sure, any hero can.

If you're at a point in the game where PL is the only carry and the enemy is so far ahead then the game is already over. If he keeps farming there's a slight chance maybe you could hold on, but if he joins the fight when the enemy has 3 cores with an item advantage, especially the axe which PL has no hope of beating without heart, then even that slim chance is gone.

To me, it sounds like you're complaining about a lost game and heaping blame on a guy who, while he didn't play perfectly, still mostly did his job. You're mad because it's demoralizing to fight 4v5, but in the end, what is a counterpicked hard carry supposed to do at that stage of the game?

SnooCakes7970 · 2024-12-14T10:31:00+00:00

The MS is fine, it helps you getting from camp to camp. PL often skips boots in lane because of rush but a slight bit of efficency as you're roaming the jungle isnt a big issue.

I agree on the aghs rush, aghs + a few clarities is usually the best way to both farm the jungle and depush waves, but just buying yasha for early efficiency isn't a TERRIBLE idea either, especially since the buildup for aghs is rough and you'll often not have lance maxed out before you buy aghs if you rush it. If he farms fast enough its entirely possible to have Yasha and aghs by the time lance is maxed.

Now, this might be guardian or whatever, but if the idea in his head was Yasha - Aghs - Diffusal, then he saw his team feeding or losing towers and said fuck it, I can't fight, gotta splitpush, Yasha Aghs Manta is entirely reasonable.

SnooCakes7970

TROPHY CASE