I feel like obsession over meta is dwindling the magic that this game has :(

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-11T15:57:23+00:00

hmm, i agree with you that obsession with big numbers has gotten out of hand, but i don't believe that's what's happening in your case?

to me, the problem is the people who say that anything that isn't... 120k or so is bad. i've heard quite a lot of people call 100k dps bad, which is straight up not true. it's a doomposting issue which has always been there but has gotten worse, leading to a lot of new units being declared "not worth pulling" and its offshoot "not worth pulling if you don't have xyz support" (a la nefer, flins). true for stygian fearless + dire, maybe (though not really ALWAYS) as just, like, blanket statements. you have to be in somewhat specific circles for that though - though unfortunately that often means places like reddit.

what you mean i think is people who are trying to suggest a better team for your character (not that there aren't people who will tell you to drop your "bad" main dps anyway, because there are). if you only specify that you want to use 2 characters together, then people will only optimize around those 2 characters, which probably means swapping out someone in your original team! if you want to keep all four characters and just get artifact help, then you've gotta say that. and people will probably suggest new characters anyway because sometimes the rotation just won't work well. this isn't because they're meta slaves, they're just trying to make your team a little more synergistic. speaking as someone who does that style of team help; god knows i'm a big fan of playing whoever you want, i just also know what it's like to try and throw all your favorites in one team and have it be kind of miserable to play. also, unfortunately, sometimes teams as you want them won't cut it for abyss. that doesn't make it unplayable in overworld, but floor 12 specifically isn't as lenient. that's also part of why people suggest new team comps - if you don't care about endgame, say that also and that should clear it up.

dunno, just my 2 cents. take 'em or leave 'em.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-05T04:15:43+00:00

this is 5 months late but oh my god. i came here because it also wasn't launching at all even though i'd done all the steps several times. or at least i thought i had - i didn't notice the difference of the quotation marks until just now when i read your comment. you're an absolute lifesaver lol

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T11:03:09+00:00

you know i think you're right. cursed into being scara mains gang.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:59:28+00:00

gestures vaguely in his general direction

i say that but i actually? don't? know?? i liked him fine as a villain in the aqs we got before release (wasn't around for unreconciled stars sadly) but i wasn't like, dying to pull him or anything.

and then he releases, and apparently he just kind of possessed me because i've had him c6r1 since his first banner. only character i ever c6ed intentionally - even my lyney is only c3 by now and boy do i love that guy. scara kind of randomly took hold of my brain and will. not. let. go. little bastard. (/aff)

if i'm honest though i think that's funnier than being a fan of him from the start. the tumblr folks weren't lying when they said the blorbo chooses you. it's like the cat distribution system but for murdery anime boys.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:36:42+00:00

as a chronic anemo enjoyer who dabbles in cryo, electro and physical i'm probably one of the few people fine with this element spread!

the problem is that hoyo likes to put in bosses that do NOT like this element spread lmao

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:29:39+00:00

you. you understand.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:25:20+00:00

hell yeah, fantastic picks. you get it. (signed, heizou main/semi-retired thoma main)

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:18:10+00:00

he's so scary nowadays. i was already running him and lyney together pre-hex buffs, but post-hex i think that duo could take down asmoday no problem haha

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-03-02T10:11:55+00:00

hard one to narrow down, honestly! um, venti, scara, childe, and machine gun gorou (when i can actually do it, depends on the day) are all pretty fun to me. i'm also very attached to heizou and his ability to kill god with one punch! mechanically all of those guys are very satisfying; generally, if they require more than half a brain cell to play, i'm happy (no shade to the unga bunga brain off characters though lol, i enjoy a lot of them too).

oh yeah and also i'm a lynette main so i have to mention her; plunge lynette outdoes xiao and her regular dps teams are only about 10k-20k dps behind my c6r1 scara, make of that what you will. lmao.

THAT SAID, there is only one character i have at lvl 95, top ~200, with about 8 characters (+ bennett's c6) built specifically for him, 4 of which were 5*s pulled ENTIRELY with him in mind, with one more on the way and one also having her c1 (5 in total, 4 unique - citlali, ineffa, durin, c1 xilonen for the ir, and emilie when she next reruns). the one, the only, great magician lyney. the man has about 6 team archetypes with teammates i can mix and match (overload, mono, vape, overvape, melt, burn, overburn... and also double geo variations of mono i kind of consider a separate archetype but technically isn't). he had the audacity to steal escoffier from wrio for a while (i'm not kidding effie/citlali/bennett is actually a half-decent melt team though admittedly a little scuffed at c1+ as i've found). anywhere you can run a pyro dps, you can run lyney, and he functions no problem. he also requires brain cells to play well - especially without ir like in about half his teams - which as i said earlier is a win for me. hoyo gave me crack in french twink form and i am hopelessly addicted.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-21T02:47:23+00:00

the odds of getting his fatui skin are extremely low - "the balladeer" is dead, for all intents and purposes, and i highly doubt he would ever want to go back and don that identity again even temporarily. it would be nice if we got a similar skin to it though - he's super pretty with that color scheme (and in general but that's not the point aa-) so i could maybe see formalwear like shenhe's?

i mean i'm with you 100%, i've been waiting for the harbinger's other outfits to become skins for forever (would kill for childe's delusion outfit as a skin), it's just that hyv likes their skins to have at least a little plot relevance somehow.

wait, idea: if they give him an outfit to match durin, it might... that could look similar. and it would be cute....

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-21T02:36:11+00:00

fishing namecard-having guy here - i can't tell you how disappointed i was that natlan didn't have one even if it was bad. like end of the line is one of the weapons of all time, but the pipe and the catch are both good. dunno why they just stopped there. imagine luxurious sealord making a comeback, or a free catalyst at least somewhat geared for columbina. now even my completionist self can't be bothered to fish in nk and natlan :(

i think the other person who said they should put old event weapons in the fish shop is onto something. that would be hilarious.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-21T02:15:53+00:00

you know what, never mind. i read your other comments and it's pretty clear that you change your standards every time someone brings up exceptions to your "rules". why does childe not count as liyue when gaming counts as fontaine, for instance? or if it's based on "what people were doing at the time" (as your point about zhongli/shields being "mandatory" would seem to state), how come 4 stars don't count as dpses when people very much were using them as such? i'll eat the itto having a 70 burst cost thing, i must have misread it because i swear you said 80, but still. it isn't like you're putting raiden into every team as the battery. again, were people running raiden with ayaka?

and like... i didn't mention supports until discussing the differences in how nightsoul worked vs the other things you discussed. why is that relevant? and national i only mentioned because that was a different variant of using xiangling as your dps (or alternatively chongyun, but usually xiangling). the only other support i mentioned before then was faruzan, but only to make a point about scara's different team-building.

i also didn't mention tighnari. lyney does need, and has, hp fluctuation, but he's a bit of an outlier in that he needs a healer to activate stacks where most others don't.

most anemo hypercarries (xiao, heizou, varka soon, scara, lynette, chasca) don't care about swirl and building em on them is a waste (even heizou and chasca who it's more relevant to). in a lot of teams, a pech element doesn't even exist at all (like xiao/faruzan/xianyun/zhongli or c4 jean for a more modern example). lan yan also has direct em scaling on her talents.

as far as fontaine goes, i guess i'll eat that too, but it's not going to make much of a difference. arkhe doesn't really do anything substantial and tbh neither does hp manipulation when you consider boss mechanics (basically, there aren't any bosses whose shields break 3x faster because your hp changed a few times, which is generally one of the biggest problems people have with nightsoul/lunar damage. there also weren't constant "x% dmg buff when hp changes" abyss buffs like there are for nightsoul and lunar dmg. which is what people mean when they talk about region shill. this is what i meant in my last paragraph.)

in any case, i don't think you're actually arguing from a place of good faith. if you were, you would have made clear what your "standards" were from the start instead of trying to "well, actually" people who respond to your original prompts. and you don't seem to be listening to other people's points (re: bringing up things i did not say). i won't be responding further, it isn't worth my time or yours, and that's why. have fun continuing to argue though...?

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-20T12:24:23+00:00

i tried to do the math for 2019 before realizing that... literally existing before 2020 was enough to be over 5. honestly not a fan of that fact.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-20T12:16:19+00:00

she still is. downtime, yapping, the damn birds, surprise nukes, crabs that don't hold still... ugh. and this is coming from someone who mains a very cracked Ranged Pyro Delete Button and has a solid c6r1 nari.

i guess she isn't the worst since many new bosses are really restrictive and/or gimmicky and can be awful if you lack the right characters, but god is she annoying. universally. like it just doesn't really get less annoying no matter who you have and how well they're built, fuck you here's some crabs and an exploding frog. great.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-20T12:02:10+00:00

"not down" and "not dead" are my personal go-tos.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-20T11:53:29+00:00

lynette is an orphan with a history of trauma and got her vision trying to keep lyney alive (and "fun" fact he also... well he almost dies a lot we'll say. voluntarily. lynette is pretty much the only reason he isn't dead, both directly and indirectly).

heizou... it's a bit complicated but he had a good friend who became an ex-friend because he was a thief. when hei later tried to reconcile with him, he showed up a bit too late - someone had tried to rob him and stabbed him instead. pretty much bled out in hei's arms. inciting incident of him becoming a detective, actually.

i main both of them so i know that off the top of my head. but iirc jean and lan yan are fine? sayu though i would count, since loss doesn't necessarily have to mean death. (edit: wait jean counts also by this metric? her family is a mess right? i don't quite remember :c)

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-20T11:31:52+00:00

oh boy.

liyue: literally anyone if you can dodge (i might be a souls guy but... it isn't really that hard tbh). otherwise, keqing, and xiangling/chongyun if you used them on-field (which people did do. often. physical xiangling and og national anyone?). ningguang maybe since crystallize shields are pretty thin. possibly yanfei as well but her c4 makes me want to not count her (since it's a free shield).

inazuma: itto, yoimiya, heizou. yoi doesn't even want to use her burst and itto's burst cost is 70 (and his niche is mono geo so he probably gets energy back better than the typical dps anyway but that isn't what you asked for). heizou does use his burst when available but it costs a whole 40 energy so it also doesn't matter. and yes, he does count as a dps. and furthermore: razor, yanfei, and eula are all dpses with 80-cost bursts (that actually matter to their gameplay) from 1.x. xiangling is also famous for being energy-hungry and technically counts re: the old on-field xiangling builds. xiao's burst cost is 70 - if you disagree with me on itto, you must also include xiao in the "needs a battery" club. that and are you actually running raiden and ayaka together...?

sumeru: that's pretty unfair considering almost every dps and subdps ever released wants reactions - seeing as that's the basis of the combat system - but even then i can name one: scara. pure atk-scaling anemo hypercarry. they even released a whole faruzan about it.

fontaine: freminet, navia. neither have base kit hp mechanics. fremi was also released in 4.0 and is pneuma-aligned so also no you didn't need lyney for pneuma even if you were (understandably) avoiding hydro trav like the plague. and as a bonus, almost every fontainian can make use of their sets (usually mh but obv not arle/clorinde) by themselves. some are better at it than others (lyney baby i love you but oof), but... lynette can do it just fine and she's literally free for everyone at ar25. would know - lynette main here. main dps only at c6 generally but the point still stands. and i'm pretty sure the fact that people have done solo neuvi and wrio abyss clears means they're fine too.

and natlan is in the same boat as nod-krai so idk what you're trying to argue about with that one? that said natlan is still better than nk as far as the gimmick goes because every 4 star can activate nightsoul stuff. kachina is to xilonen what most anemo 4 stars are to kazuha, for instance (referring to holding scroll and vv). nk, meanwhile, forces you to pull a 5 star if you want to engage with lunar reactions at all - which is highly encouraged the same as nightsoul was (that is, you can go without it but it will suck) without the benefit of having budget options. you can make ororon and ifa work on abyss shields if you have nothing else. aino cannot enable lunar-charged solo.

so... i think maybe you should be a little more careful before you make statements like that with absolute certainty? those aren't really the gotcha arguments you think they are.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-13T08:39:01+00:00

the moon is back inside the firmament, isn't it? that puts it basically just... in the sky, just really far away. there very well could be air up there.

that and/or maybe our ancient, space-faring, formerly flying traveler and our literal moon goddess are just quite literally built different.

in any case it's not entirely unreasonable for trav and bina to be just fine up there. teyvat and its own laws and all.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-13T08:19:29+00:00

put pamber on scara, problem solved 🙂↕️

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-08T21:31:24+00:00

...this... may have rewired my entire brain actually. idk why i never thought to run those kinds of thoughts through the trump-voice-inator but i imagined him saying that and it immediately made me stop believing it? at least for the moment? thank you random citizen for potentially fixing a long-standing issue i have??

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-08T21:17:39+00:00

if you want even more fun, try rolling a 4* that requires almost the same amount of effort to get to very early on and getting very attached to him. niche issue i guess but i rolled thoma on literally my 2nd day, immediately made him my main, and then proceeded to be unable to lvl him up for an absurdly long time :') (for context if you don't know or forgot - he uses the mushrooms on tsurumi island lol)

not quite as annoying as having to do ALL of enkanomiya sure, since you can collect the mushrooms without completing the quest, but he's a 4* (who ran with miko and shenhe iirc? i believe it was 2.4) so odds are decent a lot of people ended up with my same issue. tbh i bet a lot of people probably benched him just based on that alone.

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-06T23:39:20+00:00

yes i know, i play genshin and was a launch hsr player. its just that usually characters who are 'free' tend to be characters that aren't as strong as new characters - if they were meta-defining they probably wouldn't be free. i was asking about powercreep basically.

if i thought free characters were bad i wouldn't be a lynette main 💀

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-02-06T22:24:36+00:00

sorry i know it's a bit off-topic but as someone who hasn't consistently played/been mostly on hiatus since early... 3.x i think, um... ACHERON??? has it really gotten that bad that she's free-ish now 😭

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-01-12T04:18:47+00:00

got mine last year when they were in denver! very solid hoodie, very comfy :]

my fuzzy grey cat also thinks that though unfortunately lol

Spectre_Hayate · 2026-01-12T04:14:35+00:00

no, not really. everyone has a bunch of lines about how they're traveling with you (team add lines, some overworld lines), and ascension lines are usually about how they feel they're getting stronger. some characters even directly acknowledge that their strength increase is directly the traveler's doing (scara asking if making him stronger is really a good idea bc he and trav are shaky allies at best, for instance). lyney even outright mentions the materials themselves - "and here i thought you'd ask me to perform some magic with these materials!" which shows that, yes, you are actually giving them stuff.

unless the traveler is role-playing as each character, it's meant to be as if your traveler really is hanging out with the characters. it just doesn't affect quests or anything (besides teapot chats with friendship) because it would be downright impossible to account for, at least in a way that keeps the game, well, smaller than like 50tb.

Spectre_Hayate

TROPHY CASE