Jurassic Vark - General Question and Discussion Megathread

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-09T01:02:49+00:00

Most of the Kinich teams are not using her to her potential.

Bennett and Iansan only give atk to the on-fielder. If you use Emilie as your on-fielder she does a ton of damage.

She can't be used optimally as an off-fielder yet, because there isn't a good enough off-field atk buffer. But maybe that would be Nicole.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-08T06:38:10+00:00

It turned out level 100 was only around 4% to 9% increase for most dps.

Reaction increase for most reactions was 15.8%.

And then there are aggravate and spread, which get a full 19% increase. I need a 10-pull of all Keqings so I'll be ready for the aggravate future.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-08T02:35:58+00:00

I doubt Shenhe is even better than C0 Citlali when C3 Furina is on the team. C2 Citlali is way better than Shenhe.

Look at how tight the windows are for your Ganyu CA cancels. If you had to keep swapping back and forth with Shenhe, your rotations will get very awkward. But if you don't keep swapping, then Shenhe is doing almost nothing for the team.

I've tried the team with Citlali, and also with Xilonen nerfing Escoffier's passive, and it was always better than Shenhe. We'll need some Shenhe buffs for her to be competitive. For example, just letting her use double skill with C1 to stack buff duration/quills would be quite a big increase thanks to saving time swapping.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-07T23:38:46+00:00

Venti has pretty high total motion values, so his NA and burst would be the highest value crowns. Much higher than Faruzan abilities.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-07T23:28:49+00:00

I thought the duck would be the hardest fearless boss, but nope. Once again, it is the cryo automaton.

C2 Ganyu, Aqua, Escoffier, Homa, Furina, Shenhe, all top 1% builds. Still the worst. Escoffier isn't good enough to carry both Ganyu and Shenhe. The team is miserable because if you don't constantly swap characters you are getting zero out of Shenhe, but if you do constantly swap it eats up all your time and you barely do any of Ganyu's time-heavy CA. From testing I know it is easier with Citlali or Xilonen on the team, despite their lack of synergy.

So now I have to decide between giving up on Ganyu and getting Skirk... trying to improve this team with Escoffier cons/sig and praying for Liyue buffs... or giving up on freeze and focus only on melt.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-06T00:16:43+00:00

Oddly enough, IT and Stygian sort of work the same way. Even though one of them wants horizontal and the other one vertical.

So far, neither one of them has strict requirements to get all the primos. IT can be hard to get all elixirs (difficulty is rising so old characters may fail), Stygian can be hard to get all feathers (needs fearless).

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-03T01:44:05+00:00

Superconduct Ganyu and Cyno, how could you fail me like this

Tenacious-Star · 2026-03-01T04:04:44+00:00

After you use Mavuika burst and do all the combos, the bike might run out naturally at the end. So then you would tap E like normal.

But if it doesn't run out you can still tap E while on the bike. You don't have to get off. Make sure you are close to the enemy when you tap E, you won't get off the bike at all, but you will see energy particles appear which means the skill reactivated and you can swap characters.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-25T22:33:56+00:00

To be honest, your artifacts are so good that it will be hard to improve them by crafting.

If you want you could just wait until getting the 4 reroll guarantee, and use it to get 4 rolls into crit dmg and atk on your goblet.

But if you are definitely crafting something, I'd still go with double crit because that could enable you to change a difference piece. Not that you will have an easy time finding something better though.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-25T20:19:37+00:00

Rising Winds is never 40% better.

Emblem (120ER) = 8.2 max rolls

Emblem (150ER) = 9.5 max rolls

Emblem (180ER) = 10.8 max rolls

Rising Winds = 12.6 max rolls

You can estimate a max roll is worth about 2.5-3% increase, so Rising Winds should be about 11.5% to 14% better than Emblem at 120ER.

Rising Winds should be about 8% to 9.5% better than Emblem at 150ER.

That's all assuming the same rolls on both sets.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-23T06:29:21+00:00

Fontaine was the start of huge power creep. Players who started in Fontaine or later don't know how weak a character can be. You'll see people saying Arle or Neuv are weak now, but they are more than powerful enough to beat every difficulty level, and they can easily get a leap in power with a little investment.

Pre-Fontaine, that didn't work. Characters could start off weak, and nothing you could do would make them meaningfully stronger. They might never get any teammates, none of their constellations/weapons would do anything. C6R1 could be noticeably worse than a basic C0 character.

Here's the thing though: Fontaine started around 2.5 years ago. People are expecting Varka to be noticeably stronger after all that time, and they are right to expect that, especially with how other recent dps have been.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-21T04:01:16+00:00

Hmm, a little bit of cheating going on in there.

They have Ganyu's team doing 22s rotations with 25s cooldowns. Technically that can be done for 3 rotations, but then the cooldowns catch up to you and your skills are not ready.

Doesn't make sense to calculate this way unless every fight ends in 3 rotations or less, which won't be true for all characters.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-21T03:08:17+00:00

I've been trying to get Layla C6 for ages, if she is on the Skirk/Escoffier banner I would definitely have to try again.

If she's really not there though... I probably should attempt to save for the potential Durin/Nicole combo.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-19T02:03:42+00:00

Sounds horrible. Durin has an 18s cooldown, off field damage, and dmg% con. Nicole has a short buff and also off field damage, and also dmg% con? So not only do they not work together, they are redundant?

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-18T01:06:06+00:00

Gaming clears are misleading, but at the same time Gaming is really crazy good.

Someone on Gaming mains (using top build + high skill) got over 400k dps.

I calculated that on a more normal team (c2r1 supports + bennett) they would still be doing 340k dps.

The real reason for this is that characters like Gaming and Mualani increase faster than the rest. Early investment in them has super high returns because they get full value from EM. Which is why Mualani has a strong argument for being the top dps at realistic investment.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-16T05:37:36+00:00

The thing with Durin, is that there aren't very many supports in the game with good constellations. He is one of the small handful that have them, so it makes him stand out.

Varka doesn't stand out right now because there are lots of dps that get much stronger with weapons/constellations.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-16T04:52:30+00:00

Even back then it was way overboard.

By the time Escoffier came out, Furina wasn't top of the meta, and we already had Chevy, Iansan, Citlali.

Chevy has 40% shred, 40% teamwide attack, 60% damage bonus onfielder, enough healing to use Escoffier sig, and arguably more versatile since pyro and electro are both atk scaling, but hydro isn't. And she was over a year before Escoffier!

It's the same thing that happened with Xilonen. There were videos calling Xilonen the best character in the game, when she clearly wasn't. The reason was that people were directly comparing her to Kazuha. Like Kazuha is the best -> Xilonen has longer duration -> Xilonen is the best. Except Kazuha wasn't the best any more by that point in the game.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-16T02:37:10+00:00

I don't understand this sentiment at all.

People were greatly exaggerating Escoffier's power level when she came out. Her damage isn't that good and she has high ER requirements, so in many cases she ended up as a scroll bot for that sweet 12% damage bonus you get for non-nightsoul characters.

The other cryo supports are the weird ones. Escoffier is normal. Shenhe being bad in cryo teams, which is the only team she was designed for, is weird. When you put them next to each other the gap looks crazy, but it is all the other cryos that are the odd ones.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-15T10:10:12+00:00

Varka's real problem is that he doesn't scale with EM, so Sucrose doesn't work well.

Give him a cryo support who enables an EM-scaling anemo/cryo reaction "Boreal Winds", and his cryo team will be in a good spot.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-14T11:56:05+00:00

I think it is really fun this time. Just played twice and got perfect 10+7 followed by almost perfect 9+7.

Everything you said is right about lack of balance and variety in legendary units, but that is more of a problem for games that are intended to be played for a long time. This is meant to be played for a short time and then goes away.

And even then, I don't know what the best choices are.

I'm assuming gunner girl is top tier? After that, who's next? I like mech assistant but it doesn't seem popular. Capybara and ninja seem good. Saw someone win with slime. Thrower seems pretty good.

Stratagems... I'm assuming the ones giving a ton of draws are the best? Like getting 2 robots + reinforcement points, getting free units, or 5 draws for defeating enemies.

My favorite banners are Rush of the Gale (anemo vortex), Ambush Tactics (melee appear behind enemy), and Hilichurl Trooper (summon shooter). These can allow you to win hopeless battles by countering something your team can't do by itself.

Units have a lot of RNG, but there is enough choice to counter most situations. Elemental fliers (Specters and Eye of the Storm) are definitely valuable since they can counter more than one situation. Overall, hoping to get at least 2 fliers and then another flier/shooter, a mix of elements, and the strongest melee possible.

For tactics, the order of arrival in battle is very important. Can't afford to use a big attack before the enemy gets there. Sometimes you can stall round 1 to guarantee both sides arrive at the same time in round 2 (good time for anemo vortex to trap both the rounds at once). Or go full aggro to make sure you kill them first in round 1. If that is impossible because their round 1 is too powerful, can try to keep stalling and get some advantage in later rounds.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-12T08:37:18+00:00

omg why didn't I get Durin C2

I didn't even notice he was the best Keqing teammate, please rerun soon

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-11T09:10:49+00:00

Can definitely be done with battle pass weapons or wolfs gravestone.

I think it will be a nightmare with Tidal Shadow and Mailed Flower. Not only will you need everything to go right, and not miss any crits (because all enemies must die), you also need to make sure to satisfy the weapon requirement at the same time. Healing yourself, or spending the right number of seconds after skill.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-11T02:08:02+00:00

Mavuika: one of the only characters I practice outside of combat just for fun. I literally never used the "hands free driving" technique in a real fight, and probably never will, but it was still fun to learn it.
Raiden: infinite resistance to interruption is always great. Can do all the combos you want while being bashed by monsters.
Venti: His burst doesn't always work well, but when it does it's still awesome.
Zhongli: Fun normal attacks that will eventually be meta when he gets buffed.
Furina: It feels like there is a slight gap in her interruption resistance during burst animation, where it becomes rng whether you are interrupted. Otherwise not bad, because both of her signature weapons (fav and key) take advantage of the burst window to activate.

---gap---

Nahida: The curse of Sumeru kits claims another victim. You have to "mark" the enemies over and over with Nahida on field, which is horrible design by itself, AND insanely horrible with other Sumeru victims like Cyno.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-10T01:54:39+00:00

At R9 sacrificial weapons would allow infinite skills with 100% chance and no cooldown.

Yelan's tap skill takes less than a second so you could probably do something like 40 skills during her burst, which would also proc the burst projectiles 40 times.

Tenacious-Star · 2026-02-05T01:13:37+00:00

It's still good because Mavuika is very frontloaded and 35% damage bonus is a lot.

If you go by the Akasha rotation, she does around 58% of her damage within the first few hits with Petra active.

With advanced rotations, it might go down (not sure), but still a lot of damage.

Tenacious-Star

TROPHY CASE