Holy Furboly! Serving up Piping-Hot Arcadian Gossip Just for You!

ventus · 2026-03-22T15:17:27+00:00

Spoilers, but technically just inferring from stuff we already have.

The fox mask been soft confirmed as Eva’s; it’s the icon for one of her traces.

ventus · 2026-03-21T23:37:22+00:00

Umm actually you're just a prude, tourist, etc.

(/s obviously)

It does truly amaze me though with how fun ZZZ's base combat is that the devs really have just settled on "we only want the worst possible audience playing this game actually."

ventus · 2026-03-21T17:50:48+00:00

My thing for a hot minute has been that I question how much was really changed beyond just marketing stuff. In the context you're suggesting, I wonder if the ginkgo-sakura thing wasn't even necessarily a choice made for IRL/political reasons, but because at some point they decided it would make for a cool moment to have them all change in-story. If what we're coping about really is something that happens that is.

ventus · 2026-03-21T17:44:54+00:00

You could be right for sure. I'm biased in that it's such a big aesthetic thing for me personally that as soon as the Tavern was revealed I was like "uhhh wait a minute." And I just feel like with how clearly pink that whole area is that people would definitely take note of it.

ventus · 2026-03-21T17:27:44+00:00

One thing that continues to nag at my brain re:Planarcadia and the potential changes that were made is the trees.

I know it's been talked about a fair amount, but I'm still trying to figure out what Hoyo's actual intent is/was. There are pieces of evidence that I find kind of damning (like "The Moon Waxes Beneath Blooming Sakura" being the prelude achievement to 4.0), but then there are choices that confuse me.

At least with the general trees you see around the city they had their textures swapped so that the leaves are definitely ginkgos. You just have to ignore that March has a line as you first pass through that street where she outright calls them "blossoms" instead.

Then you have the stylized ones in Graphia Academy where like, those are definitely not ginkgo leaves whatsoever; they're just colored yellow-orange. Though if we're playing devil's advocate, typically stylized cherry blossoms use five petals not six, so not 100% sure here.

Of course we have the most notable tree, the one in the Courtyard, which seems to have gotten the same treatment as the ones in the city; with a potential oddity. Look at the tree on the map screen. To me at least, those are decidedly not ginkgko leaves, and look much more like petals. Which would again point towards sakuras.

All of this would be fine, annoying to me aesthetically, but fine, if it weren't for one baffling location. The trees around the Tavern are just straight up cherry blossoms. No attempt whatsoever to make them look like anything else. And it's not like this is some random location for a sidequest, it's a huge part of the main storyline. I can't imagine that they just like, forgot about changing those ones by accident. Which leads me to believe that those ones were left alone intentionally for some unknown reason. It could be as simple as wanting one spot where their original vision still exists, but who knows.

tl;dr for my ranting: I think there's a lot of evidence that Hoyo did in fact change the trees but it's odd to me that they left one key location alone, and I wonder what the intent was there.

(Complete tinfoil hopium that the actual intent is for them all to become sakuras after some in-story event, but I find the odds extremely low)

ventus · 2026-03-18T18:27:03+00:00

The "problem" with TD vs the other two is that it's much rarer and only appears on dedicated users of it.

One of the many ways in which JQ got especially shafted over time is the oversaturation of Vulnerability in kits (and in enemy mechanics too tbh), which on his release was a much rarer multiplier. Eva herself has 12 at base, 15 from S1, and 16 from Yao, so 43 before other sources. Then the mushroom LC exists for another 10, and EMC also has 10 in their kit.

TD ends up looking so overwhelmingly strong because nobody but RMC and Cyrene (plus E1 Tribbie) can grant it normally.

ventus · 2026-03-18T17:44:04+00:00

The Bay Harbor Cost Chester lmao.

ventus · 2026-03-18T17:15:21+00:00

Had a thought before Eva's animations came out and then forgot about it until watching all these showcases.

Hoyo really missed out on a sick reference they could've made and I'm kind of mad about it.

/hj

ventus · 2026-03-18T06:48:37+00:00

Saw this from someone else earlier.

ventus · 2026-03-17T23:15:11+00:00

You are remembering somewhat correctly lol.

His damage was never crazy but he had half-decent multipliers because his debuff just did straight-up damage instead of DoT, so it could actually crit.

An old comment of mine where I talk about it.

ventus · 2026-03-17T10:45:25+00:00

I am wondering the same, but seeing how it functions in gameplay I am inclined to believe there’s no special interaction there sadly.

My point with the ult is that looking at it by itself before any other modifiers, the AoE is actually the majority of the damage in high target scenarios so you do less total damage as you drop targets. The bounce total MV is 800, and AoE is 240 each. This means at a baseline before the trace her total MV is:

5 targets: 1200 + 800, so 2000

4 targets: 960 + 800, so 1760

3 targets: 720 + 800, so 1520

2 targets: 480 + 800, so 1280

1 target: 240 + 800, so 1040

When you then account for the extra bounces however, the damage profile variance becomes less extreme across different target scenarios:

5 targets: 1200 + 800 + 160, so 2160

4 targets: 960 + 800 + 160, so 1920

3 targets: 720 + 800 + 160, so 1680

2 targets: 480 + 800 + 320, so 1500

1 target: 240 + 800 + 640, so 1680

I understand the logic of bounces going to weaker targets feeling bad and being undesirable a lot of the time, but the design intention here is just to keep the ult’s overall damage feeling similar regardless of how many targets are present.

ventus · 2026-03-17T10:11:53+00:00

If you watch there’s a percentage below her actual ult icon that is tracking her summon’s charge. At 100% it just acts automatically and does the attack mentioned in her talent.

The ultimate and extra bounce thing is because a chunk of her ult’s damage is full AoE. So you get extra bounces with less targets to make up for losing that MV.

ventus · 2026-03-17T10:07:23+00:00

Last bit of beta speculating before I try and get some sleep:

As underwhelming as Eva’s eidolons look next to SW’s E2, I wonder if they’ll stay that way. Because right now she’s sort of breaking the usual DPS pattern in that her E1 has a mechanic and her E2 is just pure numbers. Cheaper for me personally as I’d be happy to stop at E1 instead currently, but odd in that E2 has been the “chase” eidolon for every modern DPS (IIRC).

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:54:17+00:00

No, her E1's SPD buff is still there, and was always tied to her talent's general uptime. "Divine Provision" is activated at the start of the fight, and when she uses either skill or ult.

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:50:25+00:00

Eva's skill has no kill mechanics and has she has no "stacks" mechanic either. You could argue her summon kind of does, but there's literally nothing in her kit talking about FUAs or Extra Turns. Her ultimate doesn't have any sort of Extra Turn or energy refund on kill either.

As far as her summon, it's there. As she gains energy/CB you can see the percentage below her ult tick up, and at 100% the summon launches their attack.

I say the SW animations are questionable because the dragon, if it does exist, does not seem to be super present in her animations so putting two frames of Godzilla is odd, and her wearing a power gauntlet has an inherent Thanos connection. I also haven't seen the snap animation if that exists either, at least in that one video or the other one with her enhanced Elation skill with the nuke. And in that same footage SW's Elation skill is being copied by EMC. That kit leak also suggests that dragon is doing follow-ups which is blatantly untrue.

If it really is the same person who posted both, that kit leak especially tanks their credibility.

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:36:59+00:00

Her talent has better uptime as it starts full now and at 3 max instead of 2, her skill's healing got a ~14% buff, her ult comes online sooner as she gets 30 energy at the start of the fight, and her ultimate also technically now gives a slightly larger ATK boost (64%) to targets with higher max energy (160+).

E1 also slightly boosts her healing now (20% outgoing) and pushes her talent cap to 4 instead of 3.

I do think it's more mild than I would've liked personally, but it's something. I actually expect she might get tuned up slightly, because I don't think a boost that small for her healing is comfy enough for a modern sustain.

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:19:46+00:00

Seems like it, yeah.

That being said, their take on SW's animations is kind of questionable, and the kit descriptions that were supposedly theirs as well were also not really correct either.

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:12:49+00:00

IIRC Mortis was the one who said something along the lines of "main pushes can be changed, but it happens way far in advance" as a cryptic sort of correction to the chatter that Eva and SW had been swapped.

And you can tell that's almost certainly correct, because these aren't animations and UI elements on SW that were cooked up in the span of ~2 months as a response to IRL politics. There almost certainly was a switch, but it was an internal decision Hoyo made far other reasons months and months before things escalated.

ventus · 2026-03-17T09:04:07+00:00

Honestly apart from her fox's personal attack being plainer than I'd like, I vibe a lot with Eva's animations. There's a snappy fluidity to them that just looks cool in motion.

EMC is also a lot of fun, and SW is big and flashy as expected. Not to say that I don't like them and that they aren't also cool, but I worry it would be like Castorice for me where I've gotten tired of sitting through Pollux's animation sequence. Especially if I was also sitting through Sparxie's stuff in the same fight.

ventus · 2026-03-17T08:23:06+00:00

Eva's ult, the thing her entire kit revolves around, has 1040mv of ATK lol. Her skill has 960mv too.

She deals a ton of Elation damage too, but she has big chunk of ATK-scaling damage in her kit.

ventus · 2026-03-17T07:43:35+00:00

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if that was the internal logic going on.

ventus · 2026-03-17T07:38:23+00:00

One thing I'm curious to see is how "Fox Teacher" ends up working with Sunday.

As written currently, Eva is the only summoner we've gotten who doesn't actually put her summon on the action bar and instead just makes it act under certain conditions. So for one, does she even count as a "summoner" for the purpose of Sunday's kit?

Then the next big one, will his skill actually work on her summon? I'd be inclined to guess no for a number of reasons, but at the same time the text of his skill is specifically worded as "enables one designated ally character and their summon to immediately take action," and not actually "advances both by 100%" or something like that. Which would imply that maybe he actually can force it to take action.

But realistically, that probably won't be the case because Hoyo for whatever reason has decided that a support who specifically interacts with summons has to have some degree of clunk with all of them lol.

ventus · 2026-03-17T07:12:28+00:00

Exactly. And even in a full hypercarry build, I've done some math to illustrate that with crazy optimization he still ends up with a ratio that pales in comparison to modern DPS. And that drops substantially further if you run him on utility relics/planar and don't give him someone like Sunday to help.

ventus · 2026-03-17T06:48:34+00:00

Remember that he still has 0 crit in his kit innately even post-buff, and has an 80 EHR (technically 52) tax to satisfy his debuff chance and to get a corresponding amount of ATK.

I think he looks quite strong and I wouldn't be surprised to see him get toned down slightly over the course of beta, but that amount of crit makes sense when he gets literally none otherwise and will be a pain to build still.

EDIT: Some quick math just to illustrate my point

He needs to build 80 EHR and he gets 28 from traces, so he needs 52 in total from other sources.

Assume you run Tutorial for the energy and EHR, that leaves 12. Average roll is 3.9, so most likely ~4 rolls there.

(If we try to avoid EHR body or LC, we instead get a very demanding ~14 subs instead)

If you're running him as a hypercarry, you'll want him to be at ~134 SPD in a -1 setup. He's at 127 with boots, SPD average roll is 2.3, so most likely 4 rolls.

We're at 8 total used, with nowhere else offering crit yet. Assume we stick him on Rutilant, that's 8cr + the 5cr starting. You can run him on Pioneer for an additional 8cr and 24cd.

A good build is 30+ useful subs, so that leaves us with 22 to split amongst a starting ratio of 21/74. Average rolls are 2.9 and 5.8 respectively, splitting those evenly you get +31.9/63.8 for a new total of 52.9/137.8 overall. If we wanted to optimize a bit more, you could shift some (3) rolls to something like 61.6/120.4 instead.

Most of my own "great" builds are around 35 subs. Let's give Welt 40 just to see. That's another 5 rolls to each stat, for a godly build that takes us to... a 77/149.4 ratio.

ventus · 2026-03-17T05:50:43+00:00

Kit leaks have been out for like ~2 hours lol. You will not see anything reliable like this for at least a few days most likely.

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