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tanithryudoFinally able to complete the endgame: Forgotten Hall level 12 and Pure Fiction 4. Haven't done Apocalyptic Shadow 4 yet since the time limit for that will roll over to the next monthly battlepass track, and I am considering saving it for then, but I don't forsee any issues with passing that either, since the current AP bosses are fairly easy/straightforward according to all sources.
With Forgotten Hall, I initially tried Himeko + Topaz on team 1. But it seems like the superbreak pair of Ruan Mei and Harmony MC is better used together with the break-weak boss on this level. And that leaves only 1 DPS slot, in which case, Himeko is weaker than Jing Yuan (didn't consider Topaz as she's more sub-DPS and also non-AoE). Also, their follow up attacks trigger about the same amount of times in the fight, and thus trigger about the same amount of dungeon bonus.
With team 2, Clara + Bronya make for a great duo on my account, since I have Clara built for all damage and no speed, whereas Bronya has decent speed (currently 152 and still trying for 160) and can pull Clara along. Topaz is there as SP-positive subDPS to focus on the main boss, and help trigger the dungeon bonus. Luocha as it turns out can sustain the team just fine (as long as no one gets one-shot) and half the load for debuff clearing is picked up by Bronya anyways, who's keeping Clara in the clear.
For Pure Fiction, I actually got really close to the pass threshold with the same team, but slightly less built Hanya. Turns out I just needed to raise her to to level 80, fill in her last trait with +8% ATK, and swap her lightcone for Bronya's. Not too much which of these made the main difference... the added traits, or the change in LC, since the better LC also allowed her to generate more SP, which could be critical for a team with a SP-hungry DPS such as DHIL.
Anyway, having Hanya working so well makes me less inclined to pull for the Sparkle rerun banner coming up next with Jiaoqiu. Even if she's touted as DHIL's best support due to providing SP and speed. I mean, she's essentially a Hanya-plus. But if Hanya works ok for endgame content, and I don't have a non-gameplay preference for Sparkle's character, I don't feel there's a need to pull.
Speaking of pulls, the current rumors for the 2.5 patch (the one with the story update after Jiaoqiu's banner coming up next) is that the first half will be Feixiao plus a trio 5* rerun of Robin + Kafka + Black Swan. Then second half will be Lingsha + Dr Ratio.
My current plans are to get Feixiao + her LC (because most Hunt LC I have suck). Then Dr. Ratio's LC for the pretty. Also considering on getting Robin and maybe her E1 (but not LC because there's lots of great free Harmony LCs), because she's the best/most hyped support right now. Will see how my luck goes with pulls, and whether we get news of when Aventurine rerun occurs.
Addendum: Newest rumors say that Lingsha's banner will rerun with Topaz instead of Dr. Ratio. Not sure how reliable this is, since Topaz just had a first rerun recently, and it seems weird she'd be the first character to rerun twice ahead of so many others. On the other hand, she's touted as best support DPS for Feixiao, so they might be trying to boost sales by bringing her up again. On the third hand, testers have also claimed that the Hunt-March and the new 4 star Moze on the Feixiao banner are also great supports for her, so it's not like Topaz is a must have on her team. On the fourth hand, if Ratio is kept back, then he'll likely show up along with Aventurine's rerun, which is a cute arrangement if so. Anyways... I guess we'll wait and see. All is fine as long as they're not rerunning Aventurine immediately, cuz that would really be a crunch on my jades.
With Forgotten Hall, I initially tried Himeko + Topaz on team 1. But it seems like the superbreak pair of Ruan Mei and Harmony MC is better used together with the break-weak boss on this level. And that leaves only 1 DPS slot, in which case, Himeko is weaker than Jing Yuan (didn't consider Topaz as she's more sub-DPS and also non-AoE). Also, their follow up attacks trigger about the same amount of times in the fight, and thus trigger about the same amount of dungeon bonus.
With team 2, Clara + Bronya make for a great duo on my account, since I have Clara built for all damage and no speed, whereas Bronya has decent speed (currently 152 and still trying for 160) and can pull Clara along. Topaz is there as SP-positive subDPS to focus on the main boss, and help trigger the dungeon bonus. Luocha as it turns out can sustain the team just fine (as long as no one gets one-shot) and half the load for debuff clearing is picked up by Bronya anyways, who's keeping Clara in the clear.
For Pure Fiction, I actually got really close to the pass threshold with the same team, but slightly less built Hanya. Turns out I just needed to raise her to to level 80, fill in her last trait with +8% ATK, and swap her lightcone for Bronya's. Not too much which of these made the main difference... the added traits, or the change in LC, since the better LC also allowed her to generate more SP, which could be critical for a team with a SP-hungry DPS such as DHIL.
Anyway, having Hanya working so well makes me less inclined to pull for the Sparkle rerun banner coming up next with Jiaoqiu. Even if she's touted as DHIL's best support due to providing SP and speed. I mean, she's essentially a Hanya-plus. But if Hanya works ok for endgame content, and I don't have a non-gameplay preference for Sparkle's character, I don't feel there's a need to pull.
Speaking of pulls, the current rumors for the 2.5 patch (the one with the story update after Jiaoqiu's banner coming up next) is that the first half will be Feixiao plus a trio 5* rerun of Robin + Kafka + Black Swan. Then second half will be Lingsha + Dr Ratio.
My current plans are to get Feixiao + her LC (because most Hunt LC I have suck). Then Dr. Ratio's LC for the pretty. Also considering on getting Robin and maybe her E1 (but not LC because there's lots of great free Harmony LCs), because she's the best/most hyped support right now. Will see how my luck goes with pulls, and whether we get news of when Aventurine rerun occurs.
Addendum: Newest rumors say that Lingsha's banner will rerun with Topaz instead of Dr. Ratio. Not sure how reliable this is, since Topaz just had a first rerun recently, and it seems weird she'd be the first character to rerun twice ahead of so many others. On the other hand, she's touted as best support DPS for Feixiao, so they might be trying to boost sales by bringing her up again. On the third hand, testers have also claimed that the Hunt-March and the new 4 star Moze on the Feixiao banner are also great supports for her, so it's not like Topaz is a must have on her team. On the fourth hand, if Ratio is kept back, then he'll likely show up along with Aventurine's rerun, which is a cute arrangement if so. Anyways... I guess we'll wait and see. All is fine as long as they're not rerunning Aventurine immediately, cuz that would really be a crunch on my jades.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-27 04:13 am (UTC)But it's really not an insane ask. There are 4 units per team, presuming each unit has 3-4 possible teammates per role (aka 3-4 support for each DPS, 3-4 DPS per support, etc.), that's 256 combos (at 4 units per role) assuming unique roles. If we drop that to 3 units per role, that's only 81 combos. I can literally crunch those numbers in an excel spreadsheet. I'm sure the actual design team has much faster computing power.
And all of that isn't taking into consideration that a support unit's biggest concern is to be compatible with DPS, as you mentioned the support and healers aren't going to get as much out of a debuffing unit. In that case, the actual number of combinations to consider is even smaller.
Ultimately all the roles come down to either DPS, sustain, or support. If we break it down to greater granularity, it's AoE DPS-Single Target DPS, heal-shield, buff-debuff. That's a total of six roles. AoE DPS is AoE DPS. A buff unit designed to support AoE DPS shouldn't have to take into account every single unique mechanic across all AoE DPS units. So yeah, there's going to be a slight spread (hence why I said not every combo has to be bleeding edge), but it shouldn't be hard to conceptualize mechanics that fit with different units that all fulfill the same role. Meanwhile, making sure AoE DPS get more out of an AoE support than a Single Target DPS will be enough to achieve asynchronous game balance.
OK, from what you were saying it sounded like people who main other DPS units are better off not pulling him, which makes it sound like he's designed specifically for Acheron and Ratio.
See, I'm a bit confused. This makes it sound like there's actually an ideal combo that fits multiple DPS units. That means the design team did manage to take into consideration how to design supports that can benefit a collective category of DPS units (so long as they follow a similar strategy). I'm not sure why you're arguing this isn't possible or is an insane ask.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-27 07:12 am (UTC)Ugh.. characters of a specific role are not just swappable templates with numbers changed. They involve designing and testing new mechanics which don't just spring into existence as simple as copy-pasta and adding a +1.
And it's not just you need to design N combos that work with each other. You also need to design around the fact that all *other* P-N possible combinations *don't* work with each other in unintended/broken ways. You also need to ensure that there's no (unintended) duplication of mechanics or stat boosts.
> a support unit's biggest concern is to be compatible with DPS
The biggest concern with support units from a *design* perspective is not about how much they boost any particular DPS. It's that they (1) don't make any previous supports completely obsolete in the eyes of players, and (2) don't interact with other supports/DPS in broken ways. This complexity obviously increases the more combos of characters there are in total.
I roughly follow some of the news on the CN leaks forum and the pre-release characters often go through several phases of testing/buffs/nerfs, and half the time, changes are geared toward adding or removing specific synergies with specific characters.
> it's AoE DPS-Single Target DPS, heal-shield, buff-debuff. That's a total of six roles.
It's not just as simple as that. The reason why there's different mechanics (sets) is to serve specific encounters.
Jing Yuan and Argenti are both 5 star Erudition, but you can't just shuffle them both under AoE DPS. Jing Yuan will benefit from follow-up bonuses whereas Argenti can't. Argenti will benefit way more from ult buffs where most of JY's damage comes from his Lightning Lord.
Ruan Mei and Robin are both popular buffers but they also don't fall into the same "role". RM is a staple for break-focused teams, while Robin is best to support a team that can go multiple times per round (eg. follow-up teams, but not JY's type of followup, which is too slow).
> OK, from what you were saying it sounded like people who main other DPS units are better off not pulling him, which makes it sound like he's designed specifically for Acheron and Ratio.
He's specifically designed for Acheron. Ratio is just an incidental side benefit.
Objectively speaking, people who *don't* play Acheron will get more value for their money if they pull on a different support which better suits their DPS. But if they do pull for Jiaoqiu w/o Acheron, it's not like he's useless. If you throw him into a team with random DPS and sustain, they'll still function, just not as well as if he's with Acheron.
> This makes it sound like there's actually an ideal combo that fits multiple DPS units.
The previous standard follow-up team was Ratio+Topaz+Robin+Aventurine. Feixiao is explicitly supposed to be an improvement/replacement over Ratio (lacking his debuff requirement), which is tolerated by players because Ratio was given out for free to most people and thus it doesn't feel like any purchase was invalidated. The other potential supports for Feixiao are 4 stars (Hunt-March and upcoming Moze); they're considered a cheaper side-grade/slight downgrade to Topaz for people who don't have her or don't have the money to pull her.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-27 09:44 am (UTC)(I'm going backwards because the last bit is really kind of bothering me.)
OK, if the purpose is to "not invalidate old unit", then changing the meta to constantly chase new mechanics basically defeats that purpose. You've even mentioned, just because old units can output the same numbers doesn't mean that they can keep up with the new meta due to dungeon mechanics specifically negating their strengths. In which case, how is that any different than putting out units that simply is a straight upgrade.
(To be clear, I don't like power creep, so I'm not advocating to release units that replace old units. I'm trying to understand how using dungeon mechanics to make older units useless is fundamentally different.)
Yeah, and from what you're telling me, those encounter mechanics (at least in end-game dungeons) specifically avoid playing into the old unit's strengths, thus making them irrelevant. Meanwhile, story mechanics are simple enough that any 5-star, regardless of balance, can pull the team through. Seems like miHoyo is still designing obsolescence in older units, just doing it in a more round about way than straight up adding plus ones.
If dungeons are literally avoiding the mechanics that previous support units excel at, then it doesn't matter if the current unit is or isn't stepping on the previous unit's toes, since the mechanic doesn't even get to bring benefits. It seems then the balancing is happening more on the dungeon side of things than the individual unit side of things.
As for broken interactions, if they're already testing all previous supports against a new support to make sure there's no toe-stepping (although why bother when dungeons are moving onto new metas anyway so old supports don't work as well already), then making sure there's a couple extra combos that are also viable is a drop in the bucket in terms of game balance playtesting calculations. Further more, there's already unintended interactions (per Ratio example you mentioned), in which case, they might as well just lean into it at that point. Especially if the new supports revives some older units, that'll do way more to minimize the "making previous unit obsolete in the eyes of gamers" bit of the concern.
OK, what I'm getting is that new characters get new mechanics because new dungeons are meant to circumvent older kits thus making new characters relevant. However, as I've repeatedly mentioned in my reply, this is just building obsolescence into older units without "adding plus ones" as it were. In which case, one doesn't need to test extensively against older units because older units literally do not have the skills needed to overcome the new dungeon mechanic. Or at least are already handicapped by not being equipped to deal with the new mechanics.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-27 05:08 pm (UTC)Because the meta (latest endgame mechanic) will be constantly changing. So the current meta DPS will not always be in that role. Thus, their "reign" as top DPS is only temporary, and their "lifespan" is judged by how they would do absent of those mechanic bonuses compared to other non-current-meta DPS.
The endgame mechanic is there to make the current meta DPS easier to use, faster to 0-cycle (for brags). It's not there to ensure that old DPS are unable to complete the dungeon or anything. Hence for people who don't care about 0T, or aren't newbies with lack of characters to choose, having a built old DPS with the appropriate element is sufficient for just passing them.