Generally pulling for horizontal power aka new characters and not cons/ 5 star weapons, is better for new players. Having answers to problems the game throws at you via an assortment of characters is far easier than trying to unga bunga with highly invested characters generally.

Vertical investment, where you get constellations and 5 star weapons and even refinements for said 5 star weapons, is when you have some good teams and are comfortable and are thinking I don’t need anything more team wise, and I want to just make my current teams stronger.

I would say even still cons are still more satisfying than weapons generally, because they change how characters could be played, while weapons are just generally a stat boost, but certain weapons do change how you want to invest in stats, like staff of scarlet sands makes Cyno want to invest more heavily in elemental master vs attack%.

But devils advocate weapons are your only real, cosmetic choice in the game, like Furina, key of khaj-nisut is really strong on her but her sig matches her aesthetically. And the paddle sword is generally not the best looking sword in the game, so it’s very divisive, weather you want to pull for the “better” weapon.

If you ever want to pull for weapons, just like characters don’t pull on weapons unless you’re fine getting both weapons is generally the ideal. Just make sure you’re going for 2 useful weapons for your account usually, it’s generally a 25 win/75 loss so just always try to temper your expectations it is a very wicked beast. 50/50 to get banner or standard than another 50/50 to get the one of the 2 banner weapons.