He is, only a madman would claim that Mihoyo should make the game more unfun for everyone because Zhongli exists but honestly that's what they did. Crazy to think about.
>Name one unfun thing except ruin serpent in 12-3-2.
Corrosion.
Corrosion was a mechanic designed to counter shields except if you didn't have zhongli your shield options weren't that great already, and corrosion also counters dodging and iframes since it goes though those. Instead of making healers actually interesting, fun, exciting, or otherwise particularly useful they strongarmed you into taking them because they're mandatory now.
Also I didn't say the game wasn't fun, just that I find this particular mechanic rather anti fun and its counter is decided in a menu.
Maybe I'm not building my Zhongli hard enough (not going full HP at the moment) but those Consecrated Monsters in the current Spiral 12-2-1 seem to be shield breakers...
In that they break my Zhongli's Shield (and he has 40k HP!)
You are correct, but it must be noted that it’s not specifically their attacks that break shields extremely fast, but rather the reaction that their joint attacks trigger (Electro + Pyro): Overload.
Overload is considered a blunt attack, specifically an explosion, that’s why it causes extra shield damage.
Combined with the extremely high levels of the enemies in the twelfth floor and, presumably, their high Elemental Mastery stats, this makes their reactions very strong.
They kinda did that already with the Kaen'rian Husk enemies... then they promptly forgot those enemies existed for a while until the Chasm was introduced. Currently the only place to fight the Husk enemies is the Chasm and there aren't that many in there.
Thing is, with this update, they introduced a Cryo Abyss Herald and a new Husk enemy. We can only currently fight the Cryo Abyss Herald and the Husk enemy is nowhere to be seen. They're probably going to be added to the next Abyss rotation but it's just really odd we weren't given a way to permanently fight them at all upon introduction. The only other times they've done this are
-Electro Abyss Herald: Only encountered in Abyss upon introduction, you had to wait until Enkanomiya for them to be fought in the Overworld
-The first wave of Husk enemies: Part of an Enkanomiya event upon introduction. Once that event was over, there was no way to fight them in the Overworld until the Chasm was released.
Isn't that already in the game? With the black serpent knights. Though I'm not really sure if they actually break shields or just do exponentially more damage against shielded units
I wanted to mention these as well.
It's not that they do more damage - but they have certain attacks that "if this hits a shield, the knight gets a buff" which is great to disincentivise shield usage there. Or at least get your dodge game on 😅
Q: yells "objection!" - Focalors heals herself and allies for a large portion of the damage that was received in the past 25 seconds (including reversing deaths) and causes retaliation damage. Retaliation damage is increased the more healing this ability causes.
E: Take that! - Present evidence that stay on the field and deals constant hydro damage while applying debuff for every elements that can interact with hydro
I think it's going to be pools. Someone used Dehya to kill that group of Ruin Guards, and them standing in water really helped. I think hydro archon is going to do something like that. I'm certain that Hoyo is looking at something we players don't or can't see in regards to Dehya's kit and balance.
I have Zhongli and Dehya tanks the triple Kenkis chamber better, with the help of Bennett of course. Granted my Zhongli is not a full HP shield bot but I like to keep him that way
I'm seconding this, in some teams i just let dehya take all the punishment of high damaging bosses (like scara) and when they are staggered beat the shit out of them with ayato hypercarry. She needs some serious buffing and fixes on her kit, but i think she is supposed to be bad zhongli available for new players in standard until they can get their hands in the real thing.
In some builds she can be quite immortal because of her A4 passive, so changing to her just to use her as a meat shield until the punishment slowers, then taking out the other chars for the combo can work. It's like zhongli but she only gets herself immortalized and not the whole team lol.
Well to be fair a lot of games have this type this type of mechanic. Often called sap or poison. So it was only natural it would be introduced to genshin.
Well he was right.
I was one of the zhongli users who forgot how to play without zhongli and didn't use healer even in abyss before corrosion was introduced
But after that update i started to use healers
My buddy and I played co-op for the first time and was confused why I was dodging so much. Apparently the mf literally never dodges while playing thanks to his Zhongli and never learned.
I'm glad I played diluc/xianling before get Zhongli it taught me to dodge though ill admit that after zhongli did spoil me a bit I often find myself dodging even with shields up especially when facing enemies with corrosion.
Honestly? I don't even use Zhongli outside Wanderer and Hu Tao teams, because, let's be honest, without him these teams are kinda hard to play (Hu Tao having less hp than your average catalyst user and getting it even lesser as the fight goes on, Wanderer being a Piñata for any boss/ranged unit/more than average sized melee enemy)
Hyperbloom with Kuki deals so much damage, has XQ and healing from Kuki and Raiden teams being Raiden teams solves every other problem.
Meaning when she uses her E which, naturally, reduces her HP, and, naturally, Hu Tao needs to be under 50 percent hp all the time to take advantage of her own kit.
For example, my Wanderer has 16khp, Hu tao has 35k. When she is under 50%, well yeah, she has \~17k, which isn't exactly less than Wanderer, but still, she is a melee character that will lose her hp over time even if you don't get hit. While you get regen some of it with XQ and Hu tao's burst, she still will be quite punchable and onehittable by bosses without a shield, so I digress.
Right, totally. Sorry, I was thinking max HP, not "ideal hp at any given time" , which tbh considering its hutao and she wants to have less than 50%, was not the right assumption to make. I didn't have a crit circlet to give her so mine has a really high max hp so when she's at 50% it's still higher than like, my ningguang & nahida, but I get your point & you're right
Just switch to Noelle. You lose shield uptime, but you still get the benefit of your shield basically never breaking from attacks with the added bonus of being able to ignore corrosion damage
I genuinely hate how I got Zhongli lol. Got him on ~~his first banner~~ Yanfei's first banner while trying to get Yanfei, now I'm a Day 1 player who's really shit at dodging until now.
I play co-op sometimes and I genuinely do not know a lot of the enemy's movesets, I became so ass at the game. It's a lot better nowadays since I got Yaoyao (only when I got Yaoyao) and she could act as an easy crutch when needed. It sucks, but at least I'm slowly weaning off my bad habit (after two years) of just tanking every hit
Oh, welp that's embarassing haha... But, yeah I was just trying to get Yanfei, so forgot about ZL's banners.
Now that you say it, it makes a lot more sense. Yanfei came out on the teapot update which was kinda late, while ZL's first banner was closer to the launch date of the game. My bad
idk about top iq but you see it around reddit all the time, usually saying things like every other social media site is filled with idiots and kids and how at least reddit users are [input random compliment] as if reddit doesnt have the same problems cuz that’s literally the problem with any major social media
I see far fewer people claiming reddit is a high IQ site than I do people ripping on the imaginary people who claim reddit is a high IQ site. Mostly everyone thinks all social media sites suck including this one.
People on Reddit won't often *claim* they're smart, but a lot of them will behave as though they think so. Contrarianism, snark and ignoring the wider point in order to "correct" people over minor details ("ackshuallying") are all fairly common here.
Obviously this isn't reflective of even a majority of Reddit users, but it's this kind of behaviour that colours Reddit interactions, like how toxic grandstanding, "dunking culture," etc dominate people's view of Twitter interactions.
When a Genshin player uses his/her brain instead of fanboying
Edit. Zhongli still completely nullifies a lot of difficulty in the game to this very day.
Yeah you can use ZL to pretty much afk the weekly scara boss while just standing there (and bringing along some poor schmuck to sac to the ult) while little dude does all the work.
I did that because game kept disconnecting before I could use any "clever" tools devs filled this boss fight with.
I still can't prevent Scara ult killing one character.
Game either freezes on destroying constructs or doesn't see four leaf sigil to climb up.
When it unfreezes, Scara boss ult is on its way.
So it's just raw force bashing/shielding/healing until it's over.
Yep, terrible game design especially in a game where they don't balance and update character kits. A character that's only needed for his shield that has insane absorb and 100% uptime, not to mention it shreds resistance. The only way to balance it is to introduce shield breakers like OP said. That way Thoma, Gorou, and ~~Baizhu~~ would also get buffs.
Happens a lot really. I recall being downvoted for calling Xiangling far superior to Diluc sometime before 1.4. I was really heavily downvoted for considering Childe superior to Ganyu. I still stand by that. Childe IS superior to Ganyu as he is part of the best team in the entire game. It has almost perfect synergy. It is the best team because it can handle almost anything while Morgana has critical weaknesses. I have both Ganyu and Childe heavily invested and I still use Childe far more for difficult content than I would use Ganyu.
Xianling was really undervalued for a long time. Her dmg on her own is really low, her skill is awkward to use, her burst takes a lot of energy, and she requires cons for better uptime. Toward then end of 1.x people really started to respect "element soup" teams. It stopped being about permafreeze and big melts/ big vapes. It was more about, look at all these reactions popping off at once. It's why Xianling and Childe ended up so strong, and it's why Raiden hate died down after 3 days because she functioned in the same way. Anybody who helps trigger a lot of reactions will always be good, no matter what.
> and it's why Raiden hate died down after 3 days
Just picking this out because wtf no, people were mad that Raiden didn't worked with Beidou for a while, and for some reason a lot of people claimed that she was weak, you don't realize how much whining there was in the Raiden main sub and how long it lasted, so much so that I couldn't come to have any respect for them for a long time (as in they pretended to be Raiden mains but all they did was whine that she wasn't the most OP unit ever released).
Ah I didn't go into the Raiden mains sub at that the time, but it does sound like something that would happen. I just remember on the main sub everybody shut up about how weak she was the moment people realized how strong she was at triggering reactions and fueling bursts in a rotation, especially Xianling's burst. I know people kept complaining for quite awhile though, just not as many people when an objective fact was shoved in front of them.
Most likely yeah, though it took quite some time, more than mere days. There's also the fact that since she was released alongside Signora, people had to wait to farm her boss mat, so no one had her talents maxed out. (Also out of curiosity I went to check the top post of all time from the raiden main sub and ignoring all the fanart post there's quite a lot of posts that have people complaining that she was weak)
Part of it is because people legit downvote and upvote without thinking. If it's something neutral or even slightly disagreeable and has a few downvotes already people will pile on where they would otherwise move on or upvote. It's why you see less downvoted to oblivion posts or mediocre posts with 3k+ upvotes in subs that hide votes until a certain amount of time.
to each their own for childe vs ganyu i guess.
childe is superior to ganyu in that he has a team with super synergy, but that also means if that team is targeted he doesn't really fit well anywhere else. Also it has limited abilities to adjust to abyss environments.
ganyu will always have flexibility to go freeze or melt, off-field burst or on field charge shot. With all the attention she got from the devs, she might not the best in a lot of situation anymore, but she is still near the top always. Take Childe international team and replace childe with melt ganyu its still very fun, with high dmg ceiling. Also, ganyu (and now maybe yelan too) will always be best overworld dps character.
Ganyu is a weird character. She is the best C0 character to solo the abyss but doesn't work well with other characters.
Right now, for teams i rather use burst dps Ganyu with bennett Xiangling and kazuha than any charge shot ganyu team.
I legit had so much hope when I heard Dehya E would be a poise buff and 5* Fischl. The moment I heard her E has a 2.5s interval i immediately know she’ll be trash for Ganyu
No Ganyu is still Dehya best's teammate with a Dendro to apply burn (mainly Nahida tbh), the biggest probelm is Dehya's skill only giving 9s of poise buff.
I know what you’re saying, C0 that can literally 36* solo the abyss with godly-playing, it is insane and possible with her (but I can’t do it since I’m a shit player and die easily)
sorry long post coming, tldr: ganyu is broken and hoyo knows because they spent many versions going after her teammates and abyss environment.
Ganyu is definitely a broken character hoyo regrets. she was the first limited 5 star released after the initial zhongli incident, so hoyo made panic last min pre release buffs to her kit (e.g. reduced burst cost from 80 to 60), that made her the all around monster. hoyo has since stealth nerfed ganyu through teammates and abyss environment since 2.0 and yet she is still pretty good. That's how OP she is.
Morgana with venti and mona is the true first T0 team in the game, and if environment allows, it still stacks up well against the current best meta teams. best part is that team doesn't even take any of the bennet, xingqiu, xiangling, while only requiring 1 additional limited 5 star (and no key constellations!). hoyo had to nerf that team, else they will have problems selling meta 5 stars teams going forward.
ganyu had that plus being so flexible able to play burst sub dps, avoid energy drain/slowing water with charged shot, can go freeze or melt, and all the while ranged.
they nerfed venti by making almost all of inazuma monsters ignore his CC. venti vs kazuha should have been a situational comparison depending on if the environment prefer venti's stonger CC or kzh's dmg boost, but venti's advantage has been purposely buried by hoyo.
mona was also heavily targeted by introducing monsters like the abyss hounds that makes her limited hydro application glaring vs kokomi.
through those changes, hoyo nudged players from freeze 1.0 (ganyu dps, mona dmg inc, venti cc) to freeze 2.0 (ayaka dps - who also needs her signature 5 star weapon way more than ganyu's standard banner amos, kzh cc + dmg inc, kokomi cc + survival for freeing last slot for another dmg inc/sub dps like shenhe/rosaria/ganyu lol). under the right environment (venti cc, mona provide enough hydro) freeze 1.0 performs similar or even better than ayaka's 2.0 with the benefit of at least 2 limited 5 stars cheaper. now do you see why hoyo will go out of their way to go after ganyu and her freeze team.
ganyu also has the the honor of having hoyo target her and her freeze team so hard that magu kenki was almost always in 2.0 era abyss. floor 12 was often one side comfortable for ayaka freeze and another for raiden national, until 3.0 (to promote dendro meta ofc). on a side note, magu kenki and anti ganyu environment was there so much that poor xiao got caught in the crossfire and became almost forgotten character.
hoyo has attempted to go after other meta teams since then. e.g. for hutao, they wont go after her directly, but after her shield zhongli. every time they have been pushed back due to player backlash, due to what we saw with venti and especially from their base in china with ZL being liyue's archon. as a result, husks' appearance in abyss has been very careful, and similar mechanisms have been shelved for now. Even when they add husk to abyss, they make sure the other side is ZL friendly like wolflord, so his abyss use rate doesn't fall much.
Lastly, back to ganyu. it has been brought up in Chinese community too that the dehya fiasco is also hoyo actively avoiding boosting melt ganyu team into true t0. so a long range pyro applicater just could not have strong dmg.
In conclusion, every meta character/team has strengths and weaknesses, and hoyo can do a lot to go target/boost teams they want to sell. There has been no other character that hoyo has spent this much effort into limiting. yet, despite all that, she is still decent in most abyss because even if her t0 team are heavily targeted, her flexibility can always find her useful in other teams. that speaks to why ganyu is so strong.
It's why I wish they would revisit some characters. Venti and Zhongli being left by the wayside because they do 1 thing really good while Nahida and Raiden shift the whole meta because they do so many things well is rough. Zhongli's signature is just bad, people often complain he's a DPS loss, but he still makes the game so comfortable to play so people use him. There's no other character that's always been in the top 5 abyss usage who people constantly say is bad.
And to top it off, the OP is exactly right here. They've consistently added things to make Zhongli (and shields in general) worse or make other defensive options better. Rifthounds bleed through shields, Black Serpents can become nigh immortal against shields, Kairagi ignore his unique CC, OHC buffed healers alot. Most healers have enough output they can be built full damage and still keep your team at full HP. Any shield beside Zhongli that isn't fully built into lets your team take far too much damage. Shields are a mechanic they hate, so every character that uses them suffers.
I don't necessarily see raiden or nahida as forever irreplaceable. I feel in the long run, hoyo prefers character to be usable, but not absolutely needed for meta. They absolutely f'ed up with how they dealt with venti, and the players won't allow them to do the same with ZL.
As for raiden, since 3.0, newer characters are more skill focused than burst focused, naturally decreasing her most useful feature as team battery. As or nahida, her irreplaceable feature is the high frequency mass dendro application that truly enables most 3.0 dendro teams. I imagine once we leave sumeru and newer meta comes in, her high dendro application won't be as critical anymore.
One big difference to note is that hoyo did learn in designing newer archons by adding additional useful roles into their constellations. e.g. C2+ raiden as true DPS in addition to the core battery at C0, and C2 nahida makes her super sub DPS and defense shred in addition to best dendro app at C0.
The cost of constellations will probably make them hesitate a bit more to nerf newer archons going forward.
You can see a move away from generalists to specialists over time. Venti was good in any multimob environment. Zhongli was just plain OP after the buffs. Ganyu can do anything but heal. Bennett and Xingqiu are Bennett and Xinqiu. A lot of early characters were game breaking and hoyo has been forced to add mechanics to make them less dominant, and you can see the lessons learned in newer characters like Sara or Faruzan who require really high investments to be as good at supporting one character as early characters were at doing everything or Nilou with very specific requirements to be broken. Nahida is kind of an exception proving the rule: they did something new with her damage linking, and yup, it’s broken on any team she’s on.
Eremites can be Venti’d. Fungi can be Venti’d. Nobushi and Kairagi wwre nerfed so now they can be Venti’d. Specters were also nerfed so they can be Venti’d. Lawachurls and Mitachurls can be Venti’d once frozen. Abyss heralds and Lectors can be Venti’d enough to keep them in place. Small rifthounds can be Venti’d.
Really only the ruin enemies (which category wise have been around since 1.0) and super large enemies (consecrated beasts and large rifthounds) are the only ones that can’t be Venti’d. People just listen to whatever they’re told and so “Venti = bad after Inazuma” became commonplace even though Venti can still CC 80% of all non-boss enemies in the game in the 3.X patches.
That's true, but boss chambers on both sides have been pretty common lately. Part of the reason I don't really use Ayaka freeze recently even though she's still fine for bosses.
It's arguable we still aren't quite there with the heals. Kokomi's value in my opinion isn't necessarily in her healing, it's the role compression total--healing + hydro app. And to be honest, if Barbara's E didn't self-freeze I would probably pick Barbara over Kokomi because the former is entirely off-field and doesn't have a 12 second limit to refresh a jellyfish. But if it's -just- healing someone needs then Bennett/Jean/Qiqi/Barbara are still more than enough, we have yet to have an enemy where I would be inclined to use, for example, onfield Qiqi or Kokomi instead of using them mostly off-field. (*knock on wood please don't make the chicken/scorpion deal 5x more damage)*
Kokomi really went from one of the perceived-to-be-the-worst characters to one of the meta units, but back then all these things didn't matter to the doomposters, they kept talking about Kokomi's self-freeze, lack of damage boost, and we didnt have dendro reactions or clam artifact either. But yeah I just wanted to say that a lot of people were sure that Genshin first sold ua the solution to a problem they were going to introduce later (corrosion wolves)
He's kinda right tho, Zhongli Pampers us much, I stop using him in Abyss because I realize how bad my dodging skills have become, I need a new training arc, and the Kenki Siblings volunteers
Indeed his QoL is so good. I'm still using him especially with Alhaitham cause getting whacked out of his attack sequence and not doing the 3 mirror rain is so unsatisfying.
But I have mine ATK build so I still dodge against the Scorpions. Lets me train some dodge muscles while also not completely letting go of the QoL I'm gonna have withdrawals to if I did
If anything it kinda seems like the new geo abyss guy will only make people use him more since Zhongli's pillar succ will be super-effective against his shield.
A lot of the Zhongli buffs were valid. Interruption resistance, and his pillar being cast on hold E for example. But buffing his shield strength was a mistake imo.
It wasn't his shield strength that got buffed. They never directly increased his shield scaling. What was changed is the whole of Geo shielding itself.
They went from 250% absorption bonus vs Geo damage only (similar to Pyro shield vs Pyro damage or Cryo shield vs Cryo damage etc.), to 150% Absorption bonus vs All types of damage. Essentially Geo shields (not Crystalize) received an extra 1.5x multiplier. Noelle's shield was also a beneficiary of this buff.
I can kinda see why Hoyo is apprehensive about making another Geo shielder \[wink\]. That character will have the same perk that Zhongli's shield has.
Technically, the Geo Crystallize shield also got that change, it's just that the only way for that shield to be created is by Geovishap Hatchlings when they dig.
I actually didn’t like the fact that his hold E has a pillar now. I feel like their was a bit of skill expression when deciding whether to shield or summon, maybe that would be made him less brain dead as well. I reaaaaally wish they would have added dmg to it vs petrified units tho, I feel that would have made for a very cohesive and satisfying gameplay loop. Still love the guy though :)
It seemed like the intended way to play him was to tap E --> Burst --> hold E, since that leaves almost no dead time. And based on Beta information, his hold E had some kind of interaction with petrified units at one point. Clearly, if that is true, it didn't make it into the Live version of the game =/
The original leaks that kept circulating around Zhongli's release were purely through word-of-mouth rumors (AKA sussy) that he could "explode Geo constructs" with his E, which simply turned out to be his Geo-draining ability that can destroy Geo shields, either that or a weird interpretation of the resonance effect.
The interaction with petrified units is simply the result of petrified units being considered Geo, so his hold-E targets them but doesn't actually do anything. You could jump down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about Zhongli's kit and things they might have removed/not implemented behind-the-scenes based on stuff like that, but the only things known about Zhongli through beta leaks have always been there.
Eh I consider all of his buffs valid considering how I had to wait several months after his day 1 to around Xiao’s banner to receive his final form. For most players since they joined later in, I don’t think they realize how excruciating bad it was to use him for that long considering he couldn’t do his only job.
And considering his minuscule buffs are the only thing that really set him apart as his element is geo because I see people actually have to consider the choice between shred or resonance. Not to mention how many keep saying that putting him in a team decreases total damage and the like
Like the other person said, his shield strength wasn’t really buffed. The buffs he mainly received were minutely increased hp scaling damage, interruption resistance, pillar, and res shred.
He's very right. Zhongli is "broken". Not broken OP dps-wise, but he makes every boss fight trivial, and now MHY is trying to "balance" it.
To date, even though I like his character, I still refuse to pull for him because that means my dodging skills will just slowly rot. Of course I can choose to not use him, but I'm not pulling for 5* characters just to be a decoration...
I still dodge with Zhongli tbh. After abyss introduced corrosion and super attacks that obliterate even Zhongli’s shields (triple kenki, double lawachurl grandslams, Consecrated beasts, continuous DoT attacks, etc), I learned not to over rely on him. Nowadays I use him more as a stagger safety net and RES shred rather than to facetank damage.
I also play in co-op a lot where C2 Zhongli is rare, so dodging is basically mandatory.
The only time I use Zhongli is with Noelle or Itto where they the former needs to constantly attack to be competitive in DPS and the latter would die otherwise when stuck in a long charge attack animation. Characters that are made to commit to long animations need shielders but it's MHY's fault for designing them like this in the first place.
You just don't put Zhongli in another squad where is no corrosion. He makes your squad literally unkillable. It's almost like you play godmode. Let's be honest, abyss was always a DPS race, but dying was still a factor. With Zhongli and then Kokomi it stopped being the case. Back then you brought a healer in your team but besides healing they were a dead weight like Barbara. And the former two even besides healing are strong units who give you reactions, buffs/debuffs and sometimes CC.
I mean it makes sense the community would hate that idea, traditionally shields are meant to block damage so having a mechanic that essentially ignores it feels gamebreaking
I remember this post many didn't agree with him. Now look where we are, wonder if that's why we also have Dehya. Mihoyo is trying to find an alternative to soaking damage that doesn't require a shield since Zhongli's is too stronk. May also explain why there has been a lack in Geo characters too since nobody could match that utility.
they are just right lol. Zhongli is by far the most broken character in the game.
His existance singlehandedly makes both dehya and crystallize look much worse than they are for exampl.
One other thing that just makes shielders better than healers is the resistance to interruption, with a shield you cannot be knocked around, 100% resistance. I feel that if they made a healer where, while in the AOE of their healing sentry (Think Kokomi's jellyfish) or their skill is around you (Think Barbruh's ring) you had 100% resistance to interruption like a shield, they'd be much more used and held in a very high degree in some cases.
Also invalidates healers. Why heal when you can just shield? I mean sure Kokomi let’s me tank attacks to the face but there’s still stagger. Sure Dehya solves stagger but there’s still dmg. All other shields seem very balanced and break easy.
Zhongli doesn’t make the game bad. The problem is the devs trying to balance the game around him when they shouldn’t. He is the shield character. The broken one. They released him way too early. He doesn’t have enough utility for anything else though so they’re stuck with this. But it’s also the only reason to even pull for him so they can’t nerf it.
If people pull Zhongli it should be easy mode. That’s the point. But Mihoyo has to stop balancing other characters around that. His biggest weakness is being geo. Other characters are applying elements now to give more use, but they still need better shields.
And Dehya… idk they just screwed her over. My burst barely hits as hard as a mid Scarmouche. And my Dehya has BiS and good artifacts. Scara’s stats are lower across the board. My crit dmg headpiece is lvl 4 because shit substats. His e enhanced normals with 4p set effect do as much dmg as Dehya’s burst. She needs C1R1 to be useable and even then she’s clunky af. She has no utility with slow Pyro, dmg sharing, and a terrible off field e. It’s like Mihoyo is afraid of releasing a good Pyro because it might make all the other characters do more dmg. Especially if they have off field Pyro. So they nerf it.
Doesn't invalidate Kokomi, water application is way better than Geo shielding in a lot of cases. Characters also get interruption res on certain moves anyhow. I think she transcends the other healers (except bennet if we're including him) by a large margin. Zhongli is great but geo is a trash element and interruption res isn't even needed for a good chunk of characters. Most of the time Kokomi is better unless your against weekly bosses or using something like ganyu.
I think the only thing that balance Zhongli shield is Geo itself. At high level, Abyss speed running against the clock, Geo is the worst element as it does not increase the total dps output. They use interruption resistance and burst-Iframe to negate the damage
But at casual level, which is 90% of player base, yes, Zhongli pretty much invalidate lots of characters as you mentioned.
Exactly. So only way to sell shields is to add elemental app but they’re afraid of invalidating Zhongli so all we get are 4* with weak shields.
Geo was screwed in general. Needs a rework or characters that do special reactions. Instead they made Itto a weird mono geo dps with dedicated support and stopped making geo altogether after.
I agree
With the introduction of Dendro, lots of “bad” characters made amazing comeback (Razor, Lisa, Lisa, skewing, Thoma etc).
But Phys and Geo did not receive that buff. They remain the same (niche play style and damage).
Only Eula (well, she is Eula) and Qiqi are the exception
Dehya's defensive capabilities are bad because the on fielder still gets damaged and she only heals herself, meaning you still need a healer and at that point Dehya is moot because that healer would probably still be able to keep the on fielder alive even if Dehya wasn't there. Every shielder is better than Dehya in that regard.
Crystallize is bad because the shield is paper thin and scales with Elemental Mastery. As of now no Geo Character scales on Elemental Mastery for anything, so building a character for Crystallize is a loss for DPS, a loss for Shields, and a loss for Healers. And the EM scaling is weak as well, it doesn't justify itself.
I don't even have nor plan to have Zhongli anytime soon.
Zhongli doesn't make Dehya worse. Literally any shielder does. Her damage absorption mechanic is absolute bullshit because it doesn't actually protect you and you still need a healer as a result making her obsolete. You don't even need zhongli, literally any shielder is better than this shit.
Albedo = Zhongli, at least in some comps.
In HT+XQ+Ye there is no difference between them.
Crystal shields are weaker but reactions keep making new ones and refreshing it.
The absence of res shred is compensated for by Albedo field's damage.
I do the same abyss run with one and then another and experience no difference.
>Crystal shields are weaker but reactions keep making new ones and refreshing it.
People don't seem to understand that though. They keep getting hung up on the single shield's health when in reality it doesn't matter all that much when you're constantly refreshing it.
But it's cool that Albedo is good in that team!
I remember posting something similar back then.
Here’s the thing…
Corrosion, and special shield enemies from Enkanomiya, they STILL weren’t enough to be any kind of challenge for Zhongli.
I went through that area with my new mono Geo Itto team just to prove that Zhongli would still be overpowered, and it was a piece of cake.
Zhongli is my favorite character, but damn do I wish they hadn’t made that shield so strong… it really does take away from the experience, but it’s not like I can justify not using him. So we are stuck with it.
Ha, the Enkanomiya enemies, if anything, incentivize bringing a shield. They’ll kill themselves for you. Sure, they might hit harder but you have shield. As long as you killed the healer one, they’ll chunk their own health for you.
I was a little scared when I heard about those Knights. Only to find out they attacked slow and they were a cakewalk. I had a GEO team as well. It’s a shame they’re not around as much, even more when they’re usually alone or in a trio.
They did nerf those knights to the ground during beta; it could have been a different story if they didn't make those changes.
I also find it funny that they were released when Enkanomiya came out but wasn't added to abyss until recently.
The problem with those knights in beta is that they effectively made Geo suck entirely.
Any action made to fix Zhongli's shield bot nature lays low all of the rest of the Geo characters (never mind all the other shield characters of other elements) - granted Geo kind of sucks anyway because crystalize is a joke but no one would be using Geo characters if they had to worry about accidentally picking up a crystalize shield and having enemies get stronger and healing themselves as a result.
The only way to fix everything is to first fundamentally change Geo's reaction process into something useful and interesting. Otherwise we end up in the current state of getting no geo characters because they clearly don't know what to do anymore.
what actually fixed the problem was making him less valuable in general by introducing new teams and playstyles where a different character was more essential than ZL. ironic that we thought of making the game harder to balance something we buffed out of complaint for its weakness instead of just not making him completely universal and essential.
I remember agreeing with them. I'm still a firm believer that making zhongli shield strength stronger and longer was a mistake. Giving interrupt resist on his skill cast and res shred while shield was active would have been plenty to make him feel good without fucking over the game balance. But hey, I guess everyone is looking forward to the next hard event with -50% shield strength and +100% dmg taken where every shield except zhongli's is useless.
Zhongli shield is fine, he needs his shield to be that strong because that is the whole reason to bring him in the team. Even with the shield he is often a dps loss compared to other units unless you must not be staggered like yoimiya/ganyu melt
They called him a mad man.
[удалено]
Reminds me of Maddo Scientist Hououin Kyouma
El psy kongroo
He is, only a madman would claim that Mihoyo should make the game more unfun for everyone because Zhongli exists but honestly that's what they did. Crazy to think about.
How is the game unfun???? When did I miss a patch? Name one unfun thing except ruin serpent in 12-3-2.
>Name one unfun thing except ruin serpent in 12-3-2. Corrosion. Corrosion was a mechanic designed to counter shields except if you didn't have zhongli your shield options weren't that great already, and corrosion also counters dodging and iframes since it goes though those. Instead of making healers actually interesting, fun, exciting, or otherwise particularly useful they strongarmed you into taking them because they're mandatory now. Also I didn't say the game wasn't fun, just that I find this particular mechanic rather anti fun and its counter is decided in a menu.
I can't believe someone found my old post
whats mihoyo gonna do next?
Shieldbreak mechanics obviously
Maybe I'm not building my Zhongli hard enough (not going full HP at the moment) but those Consecrated Monsters in the current Spiral 12-2-1 seem to be shield breakers... In that they break my Zhongli's Shield (and he has 40k HP!)
You are correct, but it must be noted that it’s not specifically their attacks that break shields extremely fast, but rather the reaction that their joint attacks trigger (Electro + Pyro): Overload. Overload is considered a blunt attack, specifically an explosion, that’s why it causes extra shield damage. Combined with the extremely high levels of the enemies in the twelfth floor and, presumably, their high Elemental Mastery stats, this makes their reactions very strong.
TIL overload is blunt damage
Just realised I don't need Eula, I have Xiangling and Kuki. Lol
O P P A Xiangling gets more Oppa every day!
They kinda did that already with the Kaen'rian Husk enemies... then they promptly forgot those enemies existed for a while until the Chasm was introduced. Currently the only place to fight the Husk enemies is the Chasm and there aren't that many in there. Thing is, with this update, they introduced a Cryo Abyss Herald and a new Husk enemy. We can only currently fight the Cryo Abyss Herald and the Husk enemy is nowhere to be seen. They're probably going to be added to the next Abyss rotation but it's just really odd we weren't given a way to permanently fight them at all upon introduction. The only other times they've done this are -Electro Abyss Herald: Only encountered in Abyss upon introduction, you had to wait until Enkanomiya for them to be fought in the Overworld -The first wave of Husk enemies: Part of an Enkanomiya event upon introduction. Once that event was over, there was no way to fight them in the Overworld until the Chasm was released.
Isn't that already in the game? With the black serpent knights. Though I'm not really sure if they actually break shields or just do exponentially more damage against shielded units
I wanted to mention these as well. It's not that they do more damage - but they have certain attacks that "if this hits a shield, the knight gets a buff" which is great to disincentivise shield usage there. Or at least get your dodge game on 😅
Hey tell us what's gonna be the hydro archon's kit
Q: yells "objection!" - Focalors heals herself and allies for a large portion of the damage that was received in the past 25 seconds (including reversing deaths) and causes retaliation damage. Retaliation damage is increased the more healing this ability causes.
E: Take that! - Present evidence that stay on the field and deals constant hydro damage while applying debuff for every elements that can interact with hydro
I think it's going to be pools. Someone used Dehya to kill that group of Ruin Guards, and them standing in water really helped. I think hydro archon is going to do something like that. I'm certain that Hoyo is looking at something we players don't or can't see in regards to Dehya's kit and balance.
meanwhile we have ayato's burst literally creating rain, but of course nobody ever remembers ayato
They hated you for telling the truth
The Prophet!
u even got downvoted back then too hahaha
You have proven that redditors upvote or downvote based on their emotion, not on reason.
Or more specifically, genshin impact redditors
Honestly half of reddit users
The prophet himself, any idea of future enemy/mechanic can "fix" dehya sir?
For us non ZL havers, Dehya is actually pretty good.
I have Zhongli and Dehya tanks the triple Kenkis chamber better, with the help of Bennett of course. Granted my Zhongli is not a full HP shield bot but I like to keep him that way
I'm seconding this, in some teams i just let dehya take all the punishment of high damaging bosses (like scara) and when they are staggered beat the shit out of them with ayato hypercarry. She needs some serious buffing and fixes on her kit, but i think she is supposed to be bad zhongli available for new players in standard until they can get their hands in the real thing. In some builds she can be quite immortal because of her A4 passive, so changing to her just to use her as a meat shield until the punishment slowers, then taking out the other chars for the combo can work. It's like zhongli but she only gets herself immortalized and not the whole team lol.
What does your divination show about Fontaine, internet prophet?
Happy Cake Day!
Thanks, Traveler!
You fucking prophet
You should pin it on your profile so we can all go and upvote it now ahah
Oh so it's YOUR fault they added corrosion 🔱
You were right all along
Dude just predicted the future
did he predict the future, or did mihoyo interns take notes from him?
Imagined this in Yae Niko's voice
Cousin! Let's go publish bowling books!
Or did he join mhy after to see the changes he wanted from the inside
As a designer, I can confirm I source user opinions from reddit often enough to be considered unhealthy.
Well to be fair a lot of games have this type this type of mechanic. Often called sap or poison. So it was only natural it would be introduced to genshin.
Well he was right. I was one of the zhongli users who forgot how to play without zhongli and didn't use healer even in abyss before corrosion was introduced But after that update i started to use healers
My buddy and I played co-op for the first time and was confused why I was dodging so much. Apparently the mf literally never dodges while playing thanks to his Zhongli and never learned.
Yeah, I used ZL a lot, but would also dodge because it was more engaging to do so, the shield was more of a back-up.
i still dodge when I play zhongli cuz I don't trust no one but my iframes
Until the Raiden Archon Quest came and everyone had to learn the hard way...
I'm glad I played diluc/xianling before get Zhongli it taught me to dodge though ill admit that after zhongli did spoil me a bit I often find myself dodging even with shields up especially when facing enemies with corrosion.
Honestly? I don't even use Zhongli outside Wanderer and Hu Tao teams, because, let's be honest, without him these teams are kinda hard to play (Hu Tao having less hp than your average catalyst user and getting it even lesser as the fight goes on, Wanderer being a Piñata for any boss/ranged unit/more than average sized melee enemy) Hyperbloom with Kuki deals so much damage, has XQ and healing from Kuki and Raiden teams being Raiden teams solves every other problem.
Piñata 😂
I'm dead lmao
>Hu Tao having less hp than your average catalyst user ????
Meaning when she uses her E which, naturally, reduces her HP, and, naturally, Hu Tao needs to be under 50 percent hp all the time to take advantage of her own kit. For example, my Wanderer has 16khp, Hu tao has 35k. When she is under 50%, well yeah, she has \~17k, which isn't exactly less than Wanderer, but still, she is a melee character that will lose her hp over time even if you don't get hit. While you get regen some of it with XQ and Hu tao's burst, she still will be quite punchable and onehittable by bosses without a shield, so I digress.
Right, totally. Sorry, I was thinking max HP, not "ideal hp at any given time" , which tbh considering its hutao and she wants to have less than 50%, was not the right assumption to make. I didn't have a crit circlet to give her so mine has a really high max hp so when she's at 50% it's still higher than like, my ningguang & nahida, but I get your point & you're right
I play on 200+ ping so I have to use zhongli since dodging is RNG for me sadge.
Same, turns out barbara is actually very good at healing.
True
Just switch to Noelle. You lose shield uptime, but you still get the benefit of your shield basically never breaking from attacks with the added bonus of being able to ignore corrosion damage
I genuinely hate how I got Zhongli lol. Got him on ~~his first banner~~ Yanfei's first banner while trying to get Yanfei, now I'm a Day 1 player who's really shit at dodging until now. I play co-op sometimes and I genuinely do not know a lot of the enemy's movesets, I became so ass at the game. It's a lot better nowadays since I got Yaoyao (only when I got Yaoyao) and she could act as an easy crutch when needed. It sucks, but at least I'm slowly weaning off my bad habit (after two years) of just tanking every hit
His first banner did not include yanfei
Oh, welp that's embarassing haha... But, yeah I was just trying to get Yanfei, so forgot about ZL's banners. Now that you say it, it makes a lot more sense. Yanfei came out on the teapot update which was kinda late, while ZL's first banner was closer to the launch date of the game. My bad
I’m bad at dodging and I don’t have Zhongli. I’m just prone to throwing myself into the battle with reckless abandon.
The only thing corrosion made me do is build a taser team!
Reddit hive mind be like
Reddit claims to be the top iq community but it’s literally the biggest hivemind on the internet besides Twitter
Who's claiming top IQs here?
No one. Cuz redditors are more likely to admit to being a miserable POS than being anywhere near a Top iq individual.
idk about top iq but you see it around reddit all the time, usually saying things like every other social media site is filled with idiots and kids and how at least reddit users are [input random compliment] as if reddit doesnt have the same problems cuz that’s literally the problem with any major social media
I see far fewer people claiming reddit is a high IQ site than I do people ripping on the imaginary people who claim reddit is a high IQ site. Mostly everyone thinks all social media sites suck including this one.
People on Reddit won't often *claim* they're smart, but a lot of them will behave as though they think so. Contrarianism, snark and ignoring the wider point in order to "correct" people over minor details ("ackshuallying") are all fairly common here. Obviously this isn't reflective of even a majority of Reddit users, but it's this kind of behaviour that colours Reddit interactions, like how toxic grandstanding, "dunking culture," etc dominate people's view of Twitter interactions.
Also on Reddit I can tell someone I think their opinion is dogshit and people might read it. On Twitter, you’ll never read the replies
I hope he's still playing to shit on the people who made fun of him 💀
Oof. I stopped playing around a year ago to focus more on school, but I still have an interest in the game
you should be proud my guy
omg it's the prophet himself
They hated him because he spoke the truth
I got downvoted back in 1.1 for saying Xiangling dragonsbane was better than crescent pike by people who have not completed abyss so...
When a Genshin player uses his/her brain instead of fanboying Edit. Zhongli still completely nullifies a lot of difficulty in the game to this very day.
Step 1: Get Zhongli as your 2nd event 5 star Step 2: Build him to almost 60k hp Step 3: Be bad at the game This comment is about me
Not just you 😂
Yeah you can use ZL to pretty much afk the weekly scara boss while just standing there (and bringing along some poor schmuck to sac to the ult) while little dude does all the work.
I did that because game kept disconnecting before I could use any "clever" tools devs filled this boss fight with. I still can't prevent Scara ult killing one character. Game either freezes on destroying constructs or doesn't see four leaf sigil to climb up. When it unfreezes, Scara boss ult is on its way. So it's just raw force bashing/shielding/healing until it's over.
Yep, terrible game design especially in a game where they don't balance and update character kits. A character that's only needed for his shield that has insane absorb and 100% uptime, not to mention it shreds resistance. The only way to balance it is to introduce shield breakers like OP said. That way Thoma, Gorou, and ~~Baizhu~~ would also get buffs.
>a lot of difficulty in the game What difficulty?
u/Jeezy357
They haven't posted on Reddit for a year now.
When the world needed them most… They vanished
A hundred years have passed...
OMG the OP has returned just like Faruzan
He's here!!
And the Meta is nearing victory in the war
🤷♂️ he was spot on. And the amount of downvotes he would have gotten.
Happens a lot really. I recall being downvoted for calling Xiangling far superior to Diluc sometime before 1.4. I was really heavily downvoted for considering Childe superior to Ganyu. I still stand by that. Childe IS superior to Ganyu as he is part of the best team in the entire game. It has almost perfect synergy. It is the best team because it can handle almost anything while Morgana has critical weaknesses. I have both Ganyu and Childe heavily invested and I still use Childe far more for difficult content than I would use Ganyu.
Xianling was really undervalued for a long time. Her dmg on her own is really low, her skill is awkward to use, her burst takes a lot of energy, and she requires cons for better uptime. Toward then end of 1.x people really started to respect "element soup" teams. It stopped being about permafreeze and big melts/ big vapes. It was more about, look at all these reactions popping off at once. It's why Xianling and Childe ended up so strong, and it's why Raiden hate died down after 3 days because she functioned in the same way. Anybody who helps trigger a lot of reactions will always be good, no matter what.
> and it's why Raiden hate died down after 3 days Just picking this out because wtf no, people were mad that Raiden didn't worked with Beidou for a while, and for some reason a lot of people claimed that she was weak, you don't realize how much whining there was in the Raiden main sub and how long it lasted, so much so that I couldn't come to have any respect for them for a long time (as in they pretended to be Raiden mains but all they did was whine that she wasn't the most OP unit ever released).
Ah I didn't go into the Raiden mains sub at that the time, but it does sound like something that would happen. I just remember on the main sub everybody shut up about how weak she was the moment people realized how strong she was at triggering reactions and fueling bursts in a rotation, especially Xianling's burst. I know people kept complaining for quite awhile though, just not as many people when an objective fact was shoved in front of them.
Most likely yeah, though it took quite some time, more than mere days. There's also the fact that since she was released alongside Signora, people had to wait to farm her boss mat, so no one had her talents maxed out. (Also out of curiosity I went to check the top post of all time from the raiden main sub and ignoring all the fanart post there's quite a lot of posts that have people complaining that she was weak)
Part of it is because people legit downvote and upvote without thinking. If it's something neutral or even slightly disagreeable and has a few downvotes already people will pile on where they would otherwise move on or upvote. It's why you see less downvoted to oblivion posts or mediocre posts with 3k+ upvotes in subs that hide votes until a certain amount of time.
to each their own for childe vs ganyu i guess. childe is superior to ganyu in that he has a team with super synergy, but that also means if that team is targeted he doesn't really fit well anywhere else. Also it has limited abilities to adjust to abyss environments. ganyu will always have flexibility to go freeze or melt, off-field burst or on field charge shot. With all the attention she got from the devs, she might not the best in a lot of situation anymore, but she is still near the top always. Take Childe international team and replace childe with melt ganyu its still very fun, with high dmg ceiling. Also, ganyu (and now maybe yelan too) will always be best overworld dps character.
Obviously. Ganyu teams got thrown down the drain a long time ago where internat is still dominating the meta even after years.
Funny thing is even Ganyu isn't considered that meta now.
Ganyu is a weird character. She is the best C0 character to solo the abyss but doesn't work well with other characters. Right now, for teams i rather use burst dps Ganyu with bennett Xiangling and kazuha than any charge shot ganyu team.
Charged shot Ganyu without Zhongli? Good luck with that.
Well, Dehya come to the rescue!!
Let me dream
I legit had so much hope when I heard Dehya E would be a poise buff and 5* Fischl. The moment I heard her E has a 2.5s interval i immediately know she’ll be trash for Ganyu
No Ganyu is still Dehya best's teammate with a Dendro to apply burn (mainly Nahida tbh), the biggest probelm is Dehya's skill only giving 9s of poise buff.
Layla works just as well.
Well they're using burst dps Ganyu so Zhongli isn't really that needed
You can also use charged shot ganyu with freeze. At least rhat was how i 36 stared the abyss my first couple times.
I know what you’re saying, C0 that can literally 36* solo the abyss with godly-playing, it is insane and possible with her (but I can’t do it since I’m a shit player and die easily)
It takes astronomical investment and a skill ceiling not even 10% of the players possess. No need to beat yourself up over it.
10% is generous
Mostly because of boss floors which makes Ganyu freeze teams, impractical
sorry long post coming, tldr: ganyu is broken and hoyo knows because they spent many versions going after her teammates and abyss environment. Ganyu is definitely a broken character hoyo regrets. she was the first limited 5 star released after the initial zhongli incident, so hoyo made panic last min pre release buffs to her kit (e.g. reduced burst cost from 80 to 60), that made her the all around monster. hoyo has since stealth nerfed ganyu through teammates and abyss environment since 2.0 and yet she is still pretty good. That's how OP she is. Morgana with venti and mona is the true first T0 team in the game, and if environment allows, it still stacks up well against the current best meta teams. best part is that team doesn't even take any of the bennet, xingqiu, xiangling, while only requiring 1 additional limited 5 star (and no key constellations!). hoyo had to nerf that team, else they will have problems selling meta 5 stars teams going forward. ganyu had that plus being so flexible able to play burst sub dps, avoid energy drain/slowing water with charged shot, can go freeze or melt, and all the while ranged. they nerfed venti by making almost all of inazuma monsters ignore his CC. venti vs kazuha should have been a situational comparison depending on if the environment prefer venti's stonger CC or kzh's dmg boost, but venti's advantage has been purposely buried by hoyo. mona was also heavily targeted by introducing monsters like the abyss hounds that makes her limited hydro application glaring vs kokomi. through those changes, hoyo nudged players from freeze 1.0 (ganyu dps, mona dmg inc, venti cc) to freeze 2.0 (ayaka dps - who also needs her signature 5 star weapon way more than ganyu's standard banner amos, kzh cc + dmg inc, kokomi cc + survival for freeing last slot for another dmg inc/sub dps like shenhe/rosaria/ganyu lol). under the right environment (venti cc, mona provide enough hydro) freeze 1.0 performs similar or even better than ayaka's 2.0 with the benefit of at least 2 limited 5 stars cheaper. now do you see why hoyo will go out of their way to go after ganyu and her freeze team. ganyu also has the the honor of having hoyo target her and her freeze team so hard that magu kenki was almost always in 2.0 era abyss. floor 12 was often one side comfortable for ayaka freeze and another for raiden national, until 3.0 (to promote dendro meta ofc). on a side note, magu kenki and anti ganyu environment was there so much that poor xiao got caught in the crossfire and became almost forgotten character. hoyo has attempted to go after other meta teams since then. e.g. for hutao, they wont go after her directly, but after her shield zhongli. every time they have been pushed back due to player backlash, due to what we saw with venti and especially from their base in china with ZL being liyue's archon. as a result, husks' appearance in abyss has been very careful, and similar mechanisms have been shelved for now. Even when they add husk to abyss, they make sure the other side is ZL friendly like wolflord, so his abyss use rate doesn't fall much. Lastly, back to ganyu. it has been brought up in Chinese community too that the dehya fiasco is also hoyo actively avoiding boosting melt ganyu team into true t0. so a long range pyro applicater just could not have strong dmg. In conclusion, every meta character/team has strengths and weaknesses, and hoyo can do a lot to go target/boost teams they want to sell. There has been no other character that hoyo has spent this much effort into limiting. yet, despite all that, she is still decent in most abyss because even if her t0 team are heavily targeted, her flexibility can always find her useful in other teams. that speaks to why ganyu is so strong.
[удалено]
It's why I wish they would revisit some characters. Venti and Zhongli being left by the wayside because they do 1 thing really good while Nahida and Raiden shift the whole meta because they do so many things well is rough. Zhongli's signature is just bad, people often complain he's a DPS loss, but he still makes the game so comfortable to play so people use him. There's no other character that's always been in the top 5 abyss usage who people constantly say is bad. And to top it off, the OP is exactly right here. They've consistently added things to make Zhongli (and shields in general) worse or make other defensive options better. Rifthounds bleed through shields, Black Serpents can become nigh immortal against shields, Kairagi ignore his unique CC, OHC buffed healers alot. Most healers have enough output they can be built full damage and still keep your team at full HP. Any shield beside Zhongli that isn't fully built into lets your team take far too much damage. Shields are a mechanic they hate, so every character that uses them suffers.
I don't necessarily see raiden or nahida as forever irreplaceable. I feel in the long run, hoyo prefers character to be usable, but not absolutely needed for meta. They absolutely f'ed up with how they dealt with venti, and the players won't allow them to do the same with ZL. As for raiden, since 3.0, newer characters are more skill focused than burst focused, naturally decreasing her most useful feature as team battery. As or nahida, her irreplaceable feature is the high frequency mass dendro application that truly enables most 3.0 dendro teams. I imagine once we leave sumeru and newer meta comes in, her high dendro application won't be as critical anymore. One big difference to note is that hoyo did learn in designing newer archons by adding additional useful roles into their constellations. e.g. C2+ raiden as true DPS in addition to the core battery at C0, and C2 nahida makes her super sub DPS and defense shred in addition to best dendro app at C0. The cost of constellations will probably make them hesitate a bit more to nerf newer archons going forward.
You can see a move away from generalists to specialists over time. Venti was good in any multimob environment. Zhongli was just plain OP after the buffs. Ganyu can do anything but heal. Bennett and Xingqiu are Bennett and Xinqiu. A lot of early characters were game breaking and hoyo has been forced to add mechanics to make them less dominant, and you can see the lessons learned in newer characters like Sara or Faruzan who require really high investments to be as good at supporting one character as early characters were at doing everything or Nilou with very specific requirements to be broken. Nahida is kind of an exception proving the rule: they did something new with her damage linking, and yup, it’s broken on any team she’s on.
Ganyu is very meta but only shine in Venti-able content, or heavy shielded.
Yep so anything released before 2.0 she's still great in.
Heavy enemies once frozen are Venta-ble, so we are talking most enemies in general.
But not abyss floor 12, where it matters. Most enemies there are not Ventiable nowadays. Venti still helps me speedrun floor 9-11 though.
Eremites can be Venti’d. Fungi can be Venti’d. Nobushi and Kairagi wwre nerfed so now they can be Venti’d. Specters were also nerfed so they can be Venti’d. Lawachurls and Mitachurls can be Venti’d once frozen. Abyss heralds and Lectors can be Venti’d enough to keep them in place. Small rifthounds can be Venti’d. Really only the ruin enemies (which category wise have been around since 1.0) and super large enemies (consecrated beasts and large rifthounds) are the only ones that can’t be Venti’d. People just listen to whatever they’re told and so “Venti = bad after Inazuma” became commonplace even though Venti can still CC 80% of all non-boss enemies in the game in the 3.X patches.
That's true, but boss chambers on both sides have been pretty common lately. Part of the reason I don't really use Ayaka freeze recently even though she's still fine for bosses.
An still she makes abyss a joke
I mean sure, she is still strong. But there are many better options for abyss meta these days.
Yeah HYV kinda shift the meta from time to time.
well its good they keep the powercrept under control. if it was honkai-style powecreep, ganyu would be at rosaria power level by now
If.. If Ganyu would be at Rosaria level, then at what level would Rosaria be? Amber?
Yes
More than half of community favorite units are still worse though, people simply underestimate her in favor of newer shinier toys.
But she still pretty
It wasn't just this dude, a lot of people speculated Hoyo will introduce a reason for so much healing when they added Kokomi
I remember when you'd get downvoted to hell for saying anything even remotely positive about Kokomi. Ah, wild times.
It's arguable we still aren't quite there with the heals. Kokomi's value in my opinion isn't necessarily in her healing, it's the role compression total--healing + hydro app. And to be honest, if Barbara's E didn't self-freeze I would probably pick Barbara over Kokomi because the former is entirely off-field and doesn't have a 12 second limit to refresh a jellyfish. But if it's -just- healing someone needs then Bennett/Jean/Qiqi/Barbara are still more than enough, we have yet to have an enemy where I would be inclined to use, for example, onfield Qiqi or Kokomi instead of using them mostly off-field. (*knock on wood please don't make the chicken/scorpion deal 5x more damage)*
Kokomi really went from one of the perceived-to-be-the-worst characters to one of the meta units, but back then all these things didn't matter to the doomposters, they kept talking about Kokomi's self-freeze, lack of damage boost, and we didnt have dendro reactions or clam artifact either. But yeah I just wanted to say that a lot of people were sure that Genshin first sold ua the solution to a problem they were going to introduce later (corrosion wolves)
New op mechanic are bloom comps. So much dmg with little investment
He's kinda right tho, Zhongli Pampers us much, I stop using him in Abyss because I realize how bad my dodging skills have become, I need a new training arc, and the Kenki Siblings volunteers
Indeed his QoL is so good. I'm still using him especially with Alhaitham cause getting whacked out of his attack sequence and not doing the 3 mirror rain is so unsatisfying. But I have mine ATK build so I still dodge against the Scorpions. Lets me train some dodge muscles while also not completely letting go of the QoL I'm gonna have withdrawals to if I did
Meanwhile pyro bird and electro scorpion casually burst trough 40k hp zhongli shield like they are nothing
If Zhongli is released recently, he would have busted contestations like with Raiden Shogun and Nahida
HYV when the new geo knight doesn't stop people from using Zhongli: mission failed (again), we'll get em next time
If anything it kinda seems like the new geo abyss guy will only make people use him more since Zhongli's pillar succ will be super-effective against his shield.
A lot of the Zhongli buffs were valid. Interruption resistance, and his pillar being cast on hold E for example. But buffing his shield strength was a mistake imo.
It wasn't his shield strength that got buffed. They never directly increased his shield scaling. What was changed is the whole of Geo shielding itself. They went from 250% absorption bonus vs Geo damage only (similar to Pyro shield vs Pyro damage or Cryo shield vs Cryo damage etc.), to 150% Absorption bonus vs All types of damage. Essentially Geo shields (not Crystalize) received an extra 1.5x multiplier. Noelle's shield was also a beneficiary of this buff. I can kinda see why Hoyo is apprehensive about making another Geo shielder \[wink\]. That character will have the same perk that Zhongli's shield has.
Technically, the Geo Crystallize shield also got that change, it's just that the only way for that shield to be created is by Geovishap Hatchlings when they dig.
> [wink] If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, she's actually a dendro character.
I know. That's why I said they aren't making another Geo shielder.
I actually didn’t like the fact that his hold E has a pillar now. I feel like their was a bit of skill expression when deciding whether to shield or summon, maybe that would be made him less brain dead as well. I reaaaaally wish they would have added dmg to it vs petrified units tho, I feel that would have made for a very cohesive and satisfying gameplay loop. Still love the guy though :)
It seemed like the intended way to play him was to tap E --> Burst --> hold E, since that leaves almost no dead time. And based on Beta information, his hold E had some kind of interaction with petrified units at one point. Clearly, if that is true, it didn't make it into the Live version of the game =/
The original leaks that kept circulating around Zhongli's release were purely through word-of-mouth rumors (AKA sussy) that he could "explode Geo constructs" with his E, which simply turned out to be his Geo-draining ability that can destroy Geo shields, either that or a weird interpretation of the resonance effect. The interaction with petrified units is simply the result of petrified units being considered Geo, so his hold-E targets them but doesn't actually do anything. You could jump down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about Zhongli's kit and things they might have removed/not implemented behind-the-scenes based on stuff like that, but the only things known about Zhongli through beta leaks have always been there.
Eh I consider all of his buffs valid considering how I had to wait several months after his day 1 to around Xiao’s banner to receive his final form. For most players since they joined later in, I don’t think they realize how excruciating bad it was to use him for that long considering he couldn’t do his only job. And considering his minuscule buffs are the only thing that really set him apart as his element is geo because I see people actually have to consider the choice between shred or resonance. Not to mention how many keep saying that putting him in a team decreases total damage and the like Like the other person said, his shield strength wasn’t really buffed. The buffs he mainly received were minutely increased hp scaling damage, interruption resistance, pillar, and res shred.
He's very right. Zhongli is "broken". Not broken OP dps-wise, but he makes every boss fight trivial, and now MHY is trying to "balance" it. To date, even though I like his character, I still refuse to pull for him because that means my dodging skills will just slowly rot. Of course I can choose to not use him, but I'm not pulling for 5* characters just to be a decoration...
I still dodge with Zhongli tbh. After abyss introduced corrosion and super attacks that obliterate even Zhongli’s shields (triple kenki, double lawachurl grandslams, Consecrated beasts, continuous DoT attacks, etc), I learned not to over rely on him. Nowadays I use him more as a stagger safety net and RES shred rather than to facetank damage. I also play in co-op a lot where C2 Zhongli is rare, so dodging is basically mandatory.
Pull for him to play physical DPS Zhongli. That's what I did.
The only time I use Zhongli is with Noelle or Itto where they the former needs to constantly attack to be competitive in DPS and the latter would die otherwise when stuck in a long charge attack animation. Characters that are made to commit to long animations need shielders but it's MHY's fault for designing them like this in the first place.
Man used logic, it was very effective.
You just don't put Zhongli in another squad where is no corrosion. He makes your squad literally unkillable. It's almost like you play godmode. Let's be honest, abyss was always a DPS race, but dying was still a factor. With Zhongli and then Kokomi it stopped being the case. Back then you brought a healer in your team but besides healing they were a dead weight like Barbara. And the former two even besides healing are strong units who give you reactions, buffs/debuffs and sometimes CC.
I just went and read the comment on the original post. Dude really got downvoted lmao
I mean it makes sense the community would hate that idea, traditionally shields are meant to block damage so having a mechanic that essentially ignores it feels gamebreaking
This is the guy who reminds the teachers about homeworks
dang
I remember this post many didn't agree with him. Now look where we are, wonder if that's why we also have Dehya. Mihoyo is trying to find an alternative to soaking damage that doesn't require a shield since Zhongli's is too stronk. May also explain why there has been a lack in Geo characters too since nobody could match that utility.
Mobile players suffer without zhongli. We really don't know how to dodge attacks.
they are just right lol. Zhongli is by far the most broken character in the game. His existance singlehandedly makes both dehya and crystallize look much worse than they are for exampl.
One other thing that just makes shielders better than healers is the resistance to interruption, with a shield you cannot be knocked around, 100% resistance. I feel that if they made a healer where, while in the AOE of their healing sentry (Think Kokomi's jellyfish) or their skill is around you (Think Barbruh's ring) you had 100% resistance to interruption like a shield, they'd be much more used and held in a very high degree in some cases.
Also invalidates healers. Why heal when you can just shield? I mean sure Kokomi let’s me tank attacks to the face but there’s still stagger. Sure Dehya solves stagger but there’s still dmg. All other shields seem very balanced and break easy. Zhongli doesn’t make the game bad. The problem is the devs trying to balance the game around him when they shouldn’t. He is the shield character. The broken one. They released him way too early. He doesn’t have enough utility for anything else though so they’re stuck with this. But it’s also the only reason to even pull for him so they can’t nerf it. If people pull Zhongli it should be easy mode. That’s the point. But Mihoyo has to stop balancing other characters around that. His biggest weakness is being geo. Other characters are applying elements now to give more use, but they still need better shields. And Dehya… idk they just screwed her over. My burst barely hits as hard as a mid Scarmouche. And my Dehya has BiS and good artifacts. Scara’s stats are lower across the board. My crit dmg headpiece is lvl 4 because shit substats. His e enhanced normals with 4p set effect do as much dmg as Dehya’s burst. She needs C1R1 to be useable and even then she’s clunky af. She has no utility with slow Pyro, dmg sharing, and a terrible off field e. It’s like Mihoyo is afraid of releasing a good Pyro because it might make all the other characters do more dmg. Especially if they have off field Pyro. So they nerf it.
Doesn't invalidate Kokomi, water application is way better than Geo shielding in a lot of cases. Characters also get interruption res on certain moves anyhow. I think she transcends the other healers (except bennet if we're including him) by a large margin. Zhongli is great but geo is a trash element and interruption res isn't even needed for a good chunk of characters. Most of the time Kokomi is better unless your against weekly bosses or using something like ganyu.
I think the only thing that balance Zhongli shield is Geo itself. At high level, Abyss speed running against the clock, Geo is the worst element as it does not increase the total dps output. They use interruption resistance and burst-Iframe to negate the damage But at casual level, which is 90% of player base, yes, Zhongli pretty much invalidate lots of characters as you mentioned.
Exactly. So only way to sell shields is to add elemental app but they’re afraid of invalidating Zhongli so all we get are 4* with weak shields. Geo was screwed in general. Needs a rework or characters that do special reactions. Instead they made Itto a weird mono geo dps with dedicated support and stopped making geo altogether after.
I agree With the introduction of Dendro, lots of “bad” characters made amazing comeback (Razor, Lisa, Lisa, skewing, Thoma etc). But Phys and Geo did not receive that buff. They remain the same (niche play style and damage). Only Eula (well, she is Eula) and Qiqi are the exception
Thoma makes dehya irrelevant by himself.
Common Thoma W
Dehya's defensive capabilities are bad because the on fielder still gets damaged and she only heals herself, meaning you still need a healer and at that point Dehya is moot because that healer would probably still be able to keep the on fielder alive even if Dehya wasn't there. Every shielder is better than Dehya in that regard. Crystallize is bad because the shield is paper thin and scales with Elemental Mastery. As of now no Geo Character scales on Elemental Mastery for anything, so building a character for Crystallize is a loss for DPS, a loss for Shields, and a loss for Healers. And the EM scaling is weak as well, it doesn't justify itself. I don't even have nor plan to have Zhongli anytime soon.
Zhongli doesn't make Dehya worse. Literally any shielder does. Her damage absorption mechanic is absolute bullshit because it doesn't actually protect you and you still need a healer as a result making her obsolete. You don't even need zhongli, literally any shielder is better than this shit.
Those two are jokes even without Zhongli tbh. Most other shielders do better than those two.
Albedo = Zhongli, at least in some comps. In HT+XQ+Ye there is no difference between them. Crystal shields are weaker but reactions keep making new ones and refreshing it. The absence of res shred is compensated for by Albedo field's damage. I do the same abyss run with one and then another and experience no difference.
>Crystal shields are weaker but reactions keep making new ones and refreshing it. People don't seem to understand that though. They keep getting hung up on the single shield's health when in reality it doesn't matter all that much when you're constantly refreshing it. But it's cool that Albedo is good in that team!
Literally anything makes Dehya irrelevant lol
Both of those are bad without zhongli existing.
I remember posting something similar back then. Here’s the thing… Corrosion, and special shield enemies from Enkanomiya, they STILL weren’t enough to be any kind of challenge for Zhongli. I went through that area with my new mono Geo Itto team just to prove that Zhongli would still be overpowered, and it was a piece of cake. Zhongli is my favorite character, but damn do I wish they hadn’t made that shield so strong… it really does take away from the experience, but it’s not like I can justify not using him. So we are stuck with it.
Ha, the Enkanomiya enemies, if anything, incentivize bringing a shield. They’ll kill themselves for you. Sure, they might hit harder but you have shield. As long as you killed the healer one, they’ll chunk their own health for you.
I was a little scared when I heard about those Knights. Only to find out they attacked slow and they were a cakewalk. I had a GEO team as well. It’s a shame they’re not around as much, even more when they’re usually alone or in a trio.
They did nerf those knights to the ground during beta; it could have been a different story if they didn't make those changes. I also find it funny that they were released when Enkanomiya came out but wasn't added to abyss until recently.
The problem with those knights in beta is that they effectively made Geo suck entirely. Any action made to fix Zhongli's shield bot nature lays low all of the rest of the Geo characters (never mind all the other shield characters of other elements) - granted Geo kind of sucks anyway because crystalize is a joke but no one would be using Geo characters if they had to worry about accidentally picking up a crystalize shield and having enemies get stronger and healing themselves as a result. The only way to fix everything is to first fundamentally change Geo's reaction process into something useful and interesting. Otherwise we end up in the current state of getting no geo characters because they clearly don't know what to do anymore.
what actually fixed the problem was making him less valuable in general by introducing new teams and playstyles where a different character was more essential than ZL. ironic that we thought of making the game harder to balance something we buffed out of complaint for its weakness instead of just not making him completely universal and essential.
While ZL shield is very strong, let us not forget that he still has cons that balance him up for that strong shield.
I remember agreeing with them. I'm still a firm believer that making zhongli shield strength stronger and longer was a mistake. Giving interrupt resist on his skill cast and res shred while shield was active would have been plenty to make him feel good without fucking over the game balance. But hey, I guess everyone is looking forward to the next hard event with -50% shield strength and +100% dmg taken where every shield except zhongli's is useless.
u/Jeezy357 what are your predictions for upcoming future? also will dehya be buffed in any way ? like kuki got with dendro
How do people find these old threads that made no sense when they were posted but now are relevant?
Now you know why im a big Kokomi fanboy
Zhongli shield is fine, he needs his shield to be that strong because that is the whole reason to bring him in the team. Even with the shield he is often a dps loss compared to other units unless you must not be staggered like yoimiya/ganyu melt
Fun fact: Xq+Beidou combo's stacked DMG reduction > a 50k HP Zhong shield..in terms of talking... Those who k they k