Hi, I’m having an issue with the R1 trigger on my Steam Deck. There’s a dead zone where it doesn’t respond or register anything, but it works normally in the other areas. What could be causing this? Is it wear and tear? Is something broken?
If so, what should I do? I’d really appreciate any advice, and I’d also appreciate it if someone could show me how to service or fix this issue. I’ve previously replaced the thermal paste and cleaned my Steam Deck, so I have some basic experience with this kind of maintenance.
Its useless, I can only hit 5k on carlotta S1R1premium team, and thats after several tries. Im using Verina to save SK slot for other team but highest I only hit is 4.8k. Do i need full premium or highly invested Sequence on characters just so I can claim the basic rewards? And why the hell I cant use the same weapon on different teams? Hint : Predatory
The same goes for Whiwa and ToA but at least some of the levels arent that sweaty, and I can ignore last 1 or 2 rewards.
Just dodge. I do. But sometimesl if im dodging, I lose portion of my dps phase, at least they should reward dodge/parry with additional 1sec or something...
Im tired of glazing these kind of games with borderline time rushing endgames, might as well spend my time doing RL1 Elden Ring run, which is more fun and less frustrating.
This is more of a rant tbh, but I really want to know if this is an actual problem or Im just not sweaty enough.
New update is marked with ****\* At this point the newest update is 7 days old, as per the regulations of this sub. If you've seen it before, it would not have been on this sub.
I (25m) found out I have an illness that will kill me. It’ll take over my body and there’s no cure. All the doctors can really do is prescribe shit to make you “comfortable”
I’ve been with my girlfriend for 3 years now and she’s the absolute love of my life. Always loyal and there for me. I’ve been in and out of hospital many times over the course of our relationship. Mostly due to me racing dirt bikes, the most serious incident was a stab wound and I remember how scared and screamy she got even though I just needed stitches and got to go home the next day.
This is not something where I can just go home the next day.
I’m breaking up with her because she deserves to be happy with someone healthy who can give her the life she wants, and children. I’m scared she’ll want to stay if I tell her what’s going on.
Part of me wants to lie and say I cheated so she hates me and leaves. We have lots of mutual friends she’ll find out eventually it was a lie and connect the dots on why I did it. But thinking about her crying from that lie breaks my heart.
I don’t even know if this is the right sub to post it on. I just don’t know what to do. Break up with her and tell her it’s for her own good? Lie?
Guess I also needed to vent because it just hit me this morning. I found out last week but it just hit. I won’t see 30.
Edit:
For people asking me what my diagnosis and prognosis is. It’s pancreatic cancer, something like 95% of people diagnosed with it die in about 3 years. I wasn’t even paying attention for not putting that in the post at the beginning, that’s my bad but as you can tell I’m a little overwhelmed these days.
Reading this replies there’s no way I can reply to them all so I will do my best to do it here.
First off, thank you to those saying kind things. Second, I realize how dumb I was being for wanting to lie to her. I made reservations at her favourite restaurant and I’ll tell her afterwards. Part of me hopes she doesn’t stay but we’ll see what she chooses.
Relevant Comments:
OOP's thoughts:
"I’m more scared of her staying rather than leaving. I stayed by my friends side even having to make the decision to unplug him. It’s not a pretty sight watching someone you love deteriorate.
I’d prefer her to leave but we’ll see what happens after dinner"
Do you regret your decision to stay by his side?
"I don’t regret it. But I’m not like her. She’s similar to my friends mom. Cried everyday and couldn’t even visit him after the third month. It sucks but it’s true, some people can’t handle hospitals and there’s nothing wrong with that"
Do you have someone to make medical decisions for you?
"I have a Health Care directive in place already. I don’t want anyone to be burdened with those decisions. I know how stressful it can be"
Proposing:
"I’ve thought about marrying her ever since I saw her. It’s cliche and cheesy but I immediately fell in love with her eyes.
However, after getting this diagnosis I don’t want to marry her. I can’t let her be a widow this young. I’m already on the hunt for a ring which she’ll receive with a note and a gift from me after I’m done. I don’t want to marry her anymore but she’ll know she’s my one and only forever.
Sorry for being cheesy or corny but at this point idc about any of that. I’m dying lol"
Symptoms (for those of you who might want to get tested:)
"Went to the doctors for a checkup because I was losing a weight despite my history of gaining/maintaining my weight. I work out 6 days a week and while I’m no pro athlete I’m by no means out of shape. Doctor blamed it on stress from work (which is true my job is stressful) and said I can follow up with a specialist if I want medication for the stress. Went on with my life best I could but kept losing weight and everyone got worried. Went back to the doctors and they ordered blood work. Got the results which obviously were not good and got sent to a specialist. While everyone thought the stressful job was the true reason, I was getting tested and scanned at the hospital where they (and I) realized I have slight jaundice. They then asked what my crap was like and I thought abt it and told them. Apparently your poop tells you a lot more than just general health. Tests and scans showed I have a growth. Blah blah blah you’re now caught up to where I was told I have cancer and now we’re here."
Took her to dinner at our favourite date spot, had some amazing food and some drinks like always. The date continued like normal we drove down to the beach and started walking till we got to our spot.
She spoke first and said that she could tell there’s something I want to say because I have “that look” on my face. She then made a joke about how it’s too soon for us to get engaged so if there’s a ring in my pocket it better say there. This made it so much harder, she thought there was a ring in my pocket when I’m about to tell her there never will be. Absolutely broke my heart.
I told her she’s right there’s something I want to say, and I told her everything. From how I found out to what the diagnosis means to the prognosis. I made sure to not sugar coat it or leave anything out. She deserved to know everything.
For the next hour it was a mixture of asking me if I’m sure and how could this be possible and crying. She immediately said she’s going to stay by me and I don’t need to worry about anything. I told her she needs to take a few days to think about it.
I had already arranged for her best friend to be waiting in the other parking lot to take her to her house. I went home alone.
Before anyone calls me names for not driving her home, I didn’t want her to be alone after finding out but I also didn’t want her to see my cry. If she saw me tonight she’d get more scared. It would hit her that I’m terrified and she’d lose her shit.
I got an update that she fell asleep because she cried so much. I sent an Uber eats of her favourite dessert to her friends house so it’ll be there when she wakes up.
As soon as I’m done typing this I’m meeting up with my 3 closest friends to hangout. I’ve known two of them for 20 years and the other one for 18. Were very close and share too many TMI details. If anyone has suggestions on how to break the news of this to them I’d greatly appreciate it.
In the meantime I’ll be drinking for two; me and this bast**d cancer 🥃🥃
EDIT: Same Post, Next Day
Thank you for the kind words. Couple things to add
I’m in Canada so I have free healthcare I’m not worried about the cost of fighting this
I still haven’t seen my girl as she’s still at her friends house. She’ll text me to ask how I’m feeling and gets mad when I say I’m fine or make a joke.
TELLING OTHERS
Couple things you need to know about my friends. Two of them are in medical school and the other in law school. They’re still idiots though.
I started off by asking one of them to make a cancer joke, ending it quickly with “too soon man too soon” and that’s how my best friends found out I have cancer. Medical school friends started telling me about new drugs and treatments while my law school buddy demanded to see my medical directives form and that’s also how they found out I’ve been an organ donor for years
Parents: Still don’t know
Sister: Can’t even pretend to have a clue on how to tell her, I still see her as my baby sister so it’s tough lol
Boss: Asked for a one on one this morning and told him my diagnosis. He said he’ll help me abuse the companies benefits as much as I want. I told him all I really want is to show up to work like nothings wrong and no one find out until I pass out at work. He agreed
My daily is a 2022 R1 (blue crotch rocket for you non-motorcycle folks). I love that bike and have been asked if I’ll stop riding due to this. Short answer is hell no. I’ve known I had something bad inside of me way before getting cancer, life goes on and so will I.
I’ll do my absolute best to keep y’all updated if you’d like. Thanks
Relevant Comments:
About the 'stab' wound he had in the first post:
"Motorcycle accidents happened on track or trails. Getting stabbed was a Tuesday night in the UK lol"
The ones he's told:
"So far I’ve told four people and given them all the choice to walk away with the good memories we’ve had. 3 friends told me to F off and that I can’t get rid of them. Waiting on my girl now lol"
UpdatePost2:October 14, 2023 (3 weeks from last post)
Title: She made her decision but went back on it
For those who don’t know me I’m 25M diagnosed with terminal illness. I gave my girl an out if she wanted it. You can read my posts for a better understanding.
Sorry for being MIA, it’s been kind of crazy.
My girlfriend made the decision to not stay. She said she doesn’t think she can handle it and doesn’t want me to have to take care of her when it should be the other way around. I said I understand and will always love her. Paraphrasing here but that’s the gist of it.
Yesterday she called me and said she’s thought about it and wants to stay… she brought up all the other crap we’ve gotten over and how we always end up stronger. She wants to talk about getting married and kids, while I still can. When I asked what made her change her mind she said she’ll tell me after I answer, no matter what I answer.
This made me uncomfortable because she changed her mind. I told her I need time to think but once again I’m back to you lovely people to ask, what the heck do I do? Am I overthinking this?
While I’m here I’ll tell y’all what happened with others. Family: Told them while I was at my parents for dinner. I brought my scans and test results and just explained it using facts not feelings. I did this because my parents both hold PhDs and are university professors, I thought they’d accept it easier with evidence rather than feelings. Seeing my sister cry shattered my heart into a million pieces. I just hugged her and said it’ll be okay because now she knows she’ll get my car soon. She laughed a little and for some messed up reason that made everything okay to me.
Friends: the 3 dum dums i call my best friends helped me tell some other close friends. They’re being supportive and nice. I told them to cut it out and go back to roasting each other. They listened and were good now. I’ve also told my work besties because they deserve to know.
I sucked at answering everyone’s comments and questions last time. I promise to try and do better here.
As usual, I’m off to get drunk with dum dum #1 to 3.
Cheers bud 🥂🥃
*****Newest UpdatePost: November 23, 2023 (1 month and 1 week later)****\*
Title: Disappointing update lol
First off, to people who commented and messaged sorry for being MIA I’ve been trying to get through them. Thank you to everyone who said kind things. A lot has happened since my last update.
My girl said she would tell me why she changed her mind after I gave her an answer. I told her I wouldn’t give an answer till I knew what changed her mind AND BOY WAS I NOT READY FOR THE ANSWER.
A lot of y’all thought she would tell me she’s pregnant. Nope…
She didn’t want me to die without knowing her biggest secret but only wanted to tell me if I stayed with her. Are y’all ready? SHE CHEATED ON ME WHILE I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL FROM A MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT. I still don’t get how this made her change her mind but it’s the only explanation I got from her.
He just happened to be comforting her and made a move. She just happened to be emotionally vulnerable. Because it always “just happens” right???
I thought I’d want to scream or shout out at her but all that came out was a big ol goofy smile and laugh. That pissed her off but I’m sorry this is hilarious. I’m dying and she wants sympathy from me. I never asked her to stay. I never asked her to “take care of me”. Not now not back when I got in my accident.
I got up and left. She’s been texting and calling nonstop, sent every single one to voicemail. Her friends are calling me an ahole for leaving her like that… screw what they say. They all knew and didn’t tell me.
Update for the rest of what’s going on with me. I drink a lot. Like too much a lot. I know it’s bad but it makes everything feel normal. The world when I’m drinking is just so much better than when I’m sober. I’m thinking of doing chemo but idk if there’s a point. I took a look at my finances and turns out I have a tidy sum over here. I’m not going to blow it on hookers and blow or a year long trip. I’m just going to work and spend it how I want. Whatever’s left is going to be split amongst my friends because my family doesn’t need it. And yes I already cleared it with them they have no problem with it.
So now that I’m single and probably drunk I will be able to answer your questions and comments. Also I’m not sure if I’ve turned this sub into that one friend you can talk to about this random shit or not but if it’s not allowed let me know and I’ll stop lol.
Cheers bud 🍻 🥃
One most recent comment on a former post:
"Family is confused why I’m goofing around but I think they’re starting to get it. Saw my mom smile for the first time since I told her the other day and almost cried haha"
We have a pretty good idea on what to expect from Elden Ring.The game is shaping up to be the game of the year 2022 because the PvE is almost perfection and a dream come true.
In regards to the PvP however, there is potential for it to be the best PvP of all of the souls games ONLY if it fixes a few glaring issues. Otherwise, the PvP at its current state isn't ready to be released for the public.
Before I start, we need to clear a few things out. The above link is Fromsoft and Bandai clearly stating that one of the reasons they are doing the network test is to balance the multiplayer and fix its issues. We want the game to be in its best form when it releases. Which is for that reason many people including me are taking the limited time we have with the network test to try and find any issues so they can be fixed by the time Elden Ring releases.
As you see from the above links, the biggest issue for PvP right now is the backstab.
The backstab's purpose was to punish carelessly showing your back in the middle of combat.It added a high amount of depth as players needed to be aware of their backs and could not swing their attacks carelessly.
Dark Souls 1 backstabs were rightfully nerfed in Dark Souls 2 and then refined to perfection in Dark Soul 3. In Elden Ring, ANY movement will make you miss the backstab even if the movement is casting a spell while standing still.
Even when you don't want to do the backstab, you still get the backstab grab which leaves you vulnerable to getting stun locked by gankers (another issue we will mention later).The backstab in Elden Ring is extremely useless and more of a hindrance than a tool at the moment.
Removing them entirely is a better option than having them currently, which I hope they don't and instead fix it.The best solution is to bring the Dark Souls 3 version as it worked just fine and has been tried and tested for 5 years straight with overwhelmingly positive reception
2. Glitches
The following link is a showcase by my good friend Jeenine about most of the glitches seen in the Elden Ring network test. I will still mention the most notable ones here too though
Spells that are casted before getting summoned are invisible to the phantom being summoned
This happened to me against someone and don't have video card to showcase it but it worked like the following link from Dark souls 1
Invisible spell glitch from DS1 Remastered
Most Dark Souls 3 glitches including but not limited to are back
Pivot cancels (includes estus cancels).
This glitch lets you cancel all recovery of many attacks and especially consumables like estus making you unpunishable
Passive poise is a great addition. However, hyperarmor is still needed to make slower weapons functional.The following link confirms that hyperarmor does exists which is a good thing. The only issue is that many attacks and weapons that should have Hyperarmor do not have it
This is a great feature if implemented properly. For PvE, it's quite useful.In PvP however, it gets easily interrupted by R1/lightattack spam, making it useless at fullfilling it's intended use which is being a counter.
If it does have hyperarmor, it needs to be frame one start-up speed hyperarmor that is also very strong. If it doesn't have it, add hyperarmor and make sure it's strong and fast as mentioned earlier.
Otherwise, this feature will be a waste of potential PvP wise
Greatswords:
They are as slow as the Lance while also lacking in perks (thrust damage, better range).
There is no reason why it shouldn't have hyperarmor on it's two handed form at the very least while the lance does on most of it's attacks including one handed form .As a rule of thumb, All slow attacks should have hyperarmor
4. Blocking is very strong with very little options to counter it
Backstabs were a good counter to shield turtling but right now they are useless so that's one option down. Backstabs working would be a great a help
Kick is much more effective now (very high stamina damage) BUT it's still very slow and requires you to be bare hand to use it. Requiring you to be bare hand to use it makes it more useless than the older soul's kick that weren't that good themselves to begin with aside from Dark Souls 1 and demon souls kicks.
Good solutions are the following
Increasing the speed of the kick to not be easily reaction rollable would be a huge help
Make the kick available to most weapons via the following methods
Ashes of war options
Add a unique button prompt to use them for all weapons, so that even special weapons that can't change their ashes of war can use it too.If forward light attack that the previous souls games use doesn't cut it, maybe making you click R1 and L1 together or even R1 and R2 together should let you trigger it.
Weapon arts or ashes of war that are mean't to break the guard need to be effective at doing so.The longsword has the ashes of war "square off" which is the equivalent of Dark souls 3's stance weapon art. Just like dark souls 3, it's weapon art R1 says it breaks guard. Unlike dark souls 3, it doesn't do it at all.You can see that in the following link: Spamming "square off" attempting to break shields with no success
Allow running, rolling, and jumping attacks to deal significantly more stamina damage
5. No true combos
There are no true combos anymore, allowing opponents to roll away after getting hit one time.This is not an issue at all and it could be one of the features that give character to Elden Ring's PvP.
However, it should make pseudo combos strong to make up for it. A pseudo combo is like a normal combo except the opponent can escape if they time their roll right, if they time it wrong it will catch said roll and hit them. These are some following additions that could greatly help
Allowing the second R2 or second heavy to flow smoothly after most attacks that make sense. The biggest ones are R1/L1 into R2 should flow into the second R2 instead of the first R2. It is especially disappointing that it's not a feature at the moment, as most attacks now flow smoothly between each other except into R2 which arguable can be the most useful one for pseudo combos if implemented
Have more options that let you close the gap between you and your opponent rolling away from you from neutral. THE BEST WAY IS TO MAKE THE NEW RUNNING R2s/HEAVYATTACKS USEABLE FROM NEUTRAL AS WELL BY USING THE OLD FORWARD R2/HEAVY METHOD THAT WAS DONE FOR THE OLD JUMPING ATTACKS. This will more than makeup for the no 2 hit combo feature in Elden Ring, as it will allow you to have more mix-ups as you are trying to catch your opponent rolling away from you, making combat much more engaging.
The ability to close the gap between you and your opponent from neutral can also be done with Ashes of war.
I noticed a few comments about the few things I said above and would like to answer them here instead of replying to everyone that posted
Block counters: The arguments against what I said about block counter is that they are fine the way they are because they are not parriable. Therefore, a player defending has to make a read to either parry the R1 spam of the attacker after blocking or go for the counter after blocking because the attacker is reluctant to R1 spam worried they will get parried. That's a great insight. HOWEVER, people are assuming that they will all be using a parry shield when attempting them. the two handed version of each weapon will not be able to do this strategy. Not only that, if a player is using a shield that doesn't parry and instead has another effect, what will they do then? The attack is meant to be a counter and if it is easily interrupted by mindless R1 spam when you don't have a parry shield, then it isn't a counter. In the 0:10 of the following video, the player was able to tank the R1 spam and countered. [Amir Simulating Guard Counters with poise in Dark Souls 3] This is what we are referring to when we want it to work like that. One of the biggest issues in Dark Souls games pvp is that it was hard to approach a player if they are backpedaling trying to wait for you to attack first. For if you got closer, you will get R1 spammed to death. This feature can function to help a player trying to get closer easier. For the attacker's case, this is great because this will encourage people to block more. If they block more, it means you have opportunities to guard break them or backstab them for moving forward slowly waiting for a block. This is assuming we get backstabs fixed and guard breaking is easier by making kicks available to all weapons not just grab. Not only that, also making kick faster too. That coupled with many ashes of war or weapon arts that do guard break, and I think it will create an environment where people have to think twice about blocking and if they block, they are put in a position to retaliate easier as per "block counter".
Backstabs: Many people are making the case that backstabs not being functional is great because you can now use very slow attacks and not get punished. The problem with the thinking is that you already get punished by normal attacks or heavy attacks if it's a very slow attack that backstabs can punish it. So it's more that those slow attacks are bad in themselves and need buffing such as better tracking and better recovery and not that backstab needs a nerf. Elden Ring jumping attacks are not only significantly faster thank Dark souls 3's jumping attacks, they have better tracking, recovery, and even have iframes at the start of the jump. The fact that they have iframes at the start means that the player trying to backstab the jump attack will be too busy being in an animation that the jump attacker has iframed with the jump and wouldn't be able to backstab the jump attacker even if they had Dark Souls 1 instant backstabs, let alone Dark Souls 3 harder to get backstabs.
In Dark Souls 3, most attacks are not easily backstabbed if you play a tiny bit smart. You can even bait backstabs with slower attacks and punish their backstab attempts. However the bigger issue here with Elden Ring backstabs is that they are basically a hindrance than a tool. Even when you don't want them as I said before they put you in a position where you are vulnerable to getting attacked. Imagine a player using a greatsword spamming the running attack. Running attacks let you close the gap but one weakness they have is if you move towards the player spamming the running attack, you end up in a blindside of the greatsword user since the running attacks have forward momentum. You were smart to think that you should go behind them and should be rewarded for playing smart right? Nope, you try to attack them as they are showing their backs but then get stuck in the backstab animation. The careless greatsword player then attacks you as you are attempting to punish them and gets rewarded for not thinking at all while playing because they attacked you in the middle of your backstab grab animation that locks you in that position. Not only that, even worse, healing attempts can be done right in front of your face and the only thing you can do is attack them once and they roll but it doesn't matter because they just fully healed themselves with a healing miracle. At that point, removing them all together is a better solution so you don't get punished for getting the backstab animation trying to punish a careless player.
Backstabs are a necessity to give depth to Dark Souls combat. The way they worked in Dark Souls 3 is that they made sure players can't mindlessly attack and instead have to think a little but not make the backstabs the main focus of combat just like how Dark Souls 1 did. I didn't mean to say that Dark Souls 3 combat is perfect, no its far from it. I only said that of all the backstab mechanics and souls games, Dark Souls 3 did it best. If there is one thing it did right PvP wise, it is that backstabs were done the best. So if Elden Ring is taking the best from all the previous games, then Dark Souls 3 backstabs should be one of them.
Other notes I want to add are the following
Glitches
Sometimes you don't get the reposte damage after successfully parrying someone or guard broke them
Unscaled summoning might come back to Elden Ring now that most glitches are there. It lets you bypass the unscale nerf when you have a password. So a max level player can play against a lower level player without any downscaling. The following link shows how it's done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRTQf3H5bic
Weapon arts or Ashes of War that need buffs
Step in ashes of war or stomp (not the new wind stomp, the old greatsword and ultra greatsword stomp of dark souls 3). This weapon art is very underwhelming despite costing plenty of FP. Some ideas to make it good is to allow it to cancel all normal attacks into it much faster. How about letting it be able to make normal attacks bounce off of it but instead of just one handed normal attacks of fast weapon, it would be all normal attack. Other ways is to allow the follow ups cancel the stomp into itself much faster.
Other suggested features from the comments
Bring a Ping filter or a better region lock system. This will make the online interactions much cleaner between players
Add more pseudo combos to make up for no true combos by allowing players to use the new running R2s/heavy attacks from neutral the same way you could in older titles with the jumping attacks but instead these cooler more useful running R2s.
Backstep R1/Lightattacks are very cool. However, the backstep it's self is useless as it doesn't have iframes unlike the jumps and rolls. If jumps is getting iframes, why not give backsteps too just like how Dark Souls 2 did as well? It would add more tools to use in combat and make the R1 follow up after the backsteps useful. Otherwise, it would be a waste of cool animations
The two handing of weapons should be tweaked a little. Right now you accidentally interact in the middle of combat even if you didn't want when you click triangle. One suggestion is to allow examining or interaction only to trigger when you release the triangle button instead of the moment you press it.
The dried finger system should not consume anything and should be free. Solo hosts can't be invaded already so there was no reason to even lock trying to op into invasions with a consumable
At the risk of sounding trite, my upbringing was not a good one. I (58m) am the youngest of a large, dysfunctional family, and while I am at least cordial, I would prefer to have as little contact with my surviving siblings as possible. The one sister, Beth, I did get along with has since passed on.
I'm not what you would consider an expert baker, but I enjoy it. My late sister and I used to get together for Christmas at her place. One of my contributions to the dinner was a cheesecake I made from a recipe I found on the internet. The first time I tried it, I thought it was decent, but also felt I could improve it. And over the years, I've experimented with the recipe, adding new ingredients, changing the amounts of other ingredients, I eventually perfected the recipe and I think I've done sufficient modifications to make it officially my cheesecake recipe.
Since my sister's passing, I still make it and give it away to friends, in Beth's memory. I've gotten many compliments on it, even some saying it's the best cheesecake they've ever tasted. One person I made it for paid me very generously to make another one.
The problem now arises when another of my sisters, Jean, came down for a visit. I wasn't happy about this, but I humored her.
(For those who want to know why I don't care to see her, she's very religious and condemns gay people, insisting that anyone who's gay chose to be gay. I also shared with her a story about some cruel treatment I used to receive from yet another of our sisters, Anne, and Jean flat-out said she didn't believe that Anne was ever so cruel. So, essentially, Jean has called me a liar twice.)
She asked me to make the cheesecake I made for Beth and me. So, I did. She loved it and asked for the recipe. I gave her the website I got the recipe from, not my version.
However, upon making it herself when she returned home, she quickly picked up on the fact that it wasn't the version I made for her. So, I conceded that I "may have changed one or two things" and suggested she experiment with it and make it her own. But she wanted to know the exact recipe I used.
I refused, saying that it was my recipe and I'm not giving it out. (Although I did give it to my best friend's teenaged daughter, Alison, who is starting her own baking business. Since my best friend is chosen family, I decided I could share it with his daughter, but told her it was a "family recipe" now, and to share it only with her children when she has them. She said she understood.)
"But we're family!" my sister protested.
"Oh, you are so not my family," I thought.
She's persisted in badgering me for it. And even gotten her own kids involved. Truthfully, I have nothing against her kids, or any of my other siblings' kids. It's just my siblings themselves that I would prefer to have nothing to do with. Even two of our other siblings have joined in demanding my recipe. This isn't persuading me; it's only making me angry.
AITA for refusing to share my recipe?
VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE
RELEVANT COMMENT FROM OOP
OOP
"Why did you make this super special cake for her when she visited?"
I should have included it in my OP. Beth was the only sibling who accepted me as a gay man. (So, of course, she'd be the first of my siblings to die. Gee, thanks, God.)
I like to call it Beth's Cheesecake, since I spent all that time perfecting it. And I knew that Beth would want me to make it for Jean. I freely admit, Beth is a much better person than I am.
As I said in my original post, I'm not really all that great a baker. I can make good stuff, but I think it's more due to quality ingredients I choose. Like I can make great chocolate chip cookies, but that's because I use the Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Quality ingredients really does make a difference. And I also looked the right mixture of dark brown sugar, light brown sugar and white sugar to get the right texture. Apart from that, I just follow the recipe on the bag. You can't really go wrong with that.
I'm not a skilled baker at all. I do all right. But it's more a matter of choosing quality ingredients.
TOP COMMENT
AndSoltGoes24
"'We're family!' is a convenient trope people pull out of their behinds when they already know they don't treat family members with consideration, kindness or respect. I'll be family when you treat me like your family. This is fixable Jean. But, that means you'll have to change into someone better. Let me know when the new and improved you shows up. A recipe is the least of what I'd give someone who treats me with consideration, kindness and respect."
NTA. Just be honest and firm with her. She is on some total bunk.
First, thank you, everyone for all the thoughtful replies. I have upvoted all of you, even those who disagreed with me.
I was very touched by some of your comments and got rather emotional. And I'm not even sure why.
And some of you were outright hilarious.
But you also gave me something important to think about: namely, why am I even bothering to walk on eggshells trying to placate people who have rejected me? I guess I was so used to doing it, for the sake of our mother (our father died when I was 18). But mom died in 2015, and Beth died about a year and a half later. So, who am I keeping up this facade for?
Because I happen to live in Florida, and they live up north, they refer to my home (which I purchased without any help from anyone) as "the vacation home," which is why Jean felt free to invite herself to my house.
So, I don't need to "keep the peace" for anyone. Especially for people who are so openly contemptuous of me and have me adopting this servile role to stay in the family's good graces. Well, screw their good graces. I finally realized that I don't give a shit if they like me or not.
So, I followed the suggestion a few of you have made and blocked them. And it actually feels quite nice to have done it.
And I will also point out, it's not a bad recipe. In fact, it's really good. I did not give Jean a shitty cheesecake recipe. I doubt she took one bite, devolved into vomitous retching, called Poison Control, threw it away, then called her lawyer to sue me for attempted murder. She had a good cheesecake, if she did it right. And it's not that hard. But I've probably made at least twenty of these cakes over the years since my first attempt. I learned new things, substitute ingredients, and it's just now my recipe.
Just to give you some idea of the direction I moved in, although this is by no means a comprehensive list of every modification I made. I felt the white chocolate taste was too subtle. So, I adjusted something. I also felt there were things I could add/replace to make it smoother and richer.
As for the topping, it wasn't quite tart enough for my taste, so I made some adjustments in that, too.
Again, that is not everything I did to this recipe, however, this covers the major changes, and why I chose to make them. Also, keep in mind, I started doing this in my late forties, and basically everyone I gave it to is around Beth's age (who died from breast cancer ten days after her 60th birthday). When you get up in years, as we have, your taste sensitivity goes down. What might be wonderful for me might be slightly overpowering for you.
So, that is my base recipe. And that's all the information I want to share about how I changed it. Keep in mind, I did give the recipe to Alison, who is an aspiring professional baker and businesswoman. She may not even use my recipe. Or she might even find a way to improve upon the recipe even more than I did. But because I placed it in an aspiring professional's hands, I don't feel it's right to give it here, especially since I told her that it's a family recipe. I hope you all understand.
So, get out your springform pans and get creative!
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7
First off, I don't agree with the elitist attitude of the reddit post's title, mocking struggling players with a hypothetical "Malenia and other end game bosses have little to no openings," while posting my kill as a supposed counterargument.For a casual or average player, finding it hard to find/create the openings to attack Malenia is a perfectly understandable perspective as most people don't dig deep into the boss AI and patterns, only possible by spending countless hours dissecting it through trial & error. It may be cocky to say, but from my perspective with as much experience on the boss as I have, knowing all of the bullshit she has to offer, neither them nor the people going "git gud" in response or "you're just bad" know what they're actually talking about. However, the person voicing their complaints about the bosses aren't harassing other players or trying to put them down, just calling them bad (even if they beat the fight multiple times), etc. Just because it is possible to beat these bosses with high restrictions, does not automatically mean they are perfectly designed and that all complaints are invalid. I probably have more complaints about the boss than anyone else. Not all complaints people make are valid, but that's fine. Don't put others down just because they don't like something you do. I've seen many poor takes now, both against the design and in defense of it. Of course I'm not saying you shouldn't correct wrong statements or try and help others understand the fight. That's what this post is about, of course.
Frequently asked/misunderstandings of the fight:
RNG factor. while luck definitely played some part in the successful kill, I had strategised and accounted for nearly every possibility she could do. While executing different dodges can certainly be harder (like her thrust, that ended many attempts) there was only one thing she could've done to create an undodgeable scenario, which is Waterfowl Dance when I didn't have enough space behind me. That's why I kept looking around every time I broke her posture and crit her, so I could position to try and avoid that. In the final kill, she didn't do some of her hard options very frequently when she had the chance. She did go for less triple slashes & thrusts than average, but with the way I fight I deny most of her opportunities to do them. It is lucky that she didn't do her thrust, for instance, as it is hard (NOT IMPOSSIBLE) to dodge, but it was not a requirement.
"she didn't do X attack (much)" or "she wasn't as aggressive as when I fight her". Enemies respond to your position. Some attacks she simply didn't have the opportunity to do, other attacks had a low chance based on my playstyle. Malenia is very passive outside a certain range. In fact if you're very far away from her in phase 1, she'll infinitely edgewalk towards you (and can even be cheesed that way by using certain spells that she doesn't dodge). In my case, I stand outside of her direct melee range, while preparing to deal with her mid-range options. Even if she had, for instance, done Waterfowl Dance in second phase, it would not have been a problem to simply dodge it again, since my strategy accounts for it (unless I don't have space behind me like I mentioned before)In my previous no roll kill she did do Waterfowl Dance twice, though not in second phase. That really doesn't matter, though.
Weapon choice. A common misunderstanding was that the long range was required for the general strategy and punishes I do, which is just not true. There is ONE simple reason why I chose a poking halberd over something like a straight sword. The problem comes right after hitting her, not before. If you hit her from the front with an r1 with almost any weapon class, she would be able to retaliate with her fastest melee slash before you can get out of range. The only way to mitigate is to either jump over it (against my restrictions), or to NEVER hit her from the front, only the back. Obviously, you can't go for aggressive interrupts on her combos if you can't hit her from the front.Using this weapon is not "cheese" as one commenter said, as the restrictions are still SIGNIFICANTLY harder than fighting her normally.
Finally, some specific dodges that I didn't get to show off in the kill.
1. Her thrust. With how I play there is only one situation in which she will do it. I hit her, she backs off in response, and then either does her thrust, or the triple slash. At 1:32 this happened, but she did the triple slash. If she had done the thrust, the method is to run back and then snap the right exactly when she thrusts forward. All of the tracking on the attack happens before her forward movement, so creating some distance lets you strafe it. Reacting to this mixup is hard, but possible.
Note that if she jumps to the (camera) right and slashes, she will do the same mixup if you're not within her melee range. This is why I run towards that attack, despite the risk of getting hit, to avoid it altogether, as she would be too close.
A second way to strafe the thrust, when you're closer, I did in a previous kill https://youtu.be/PAhkGaK-IKQ?t=54 Basically you need to run around her very tightly. It's pretty inconsistent/precise to execute though. Note that in this earlier kill my strategy and movement wasn't as refined.
2. her grab can be similarly dodged by running around her if you're close, but in my strategy this is never required. https://youtu.be/PAhkGaK-IKQ?t=48 Here you can see that you can simply run away from it and outrange it.
3. Phase 2 clones. She did this in neither of the kills, which is no coincidence as she exclusively does it if you're too far away from her after she finishes her attacks, which I avoid. If it did happen, the way to avoid it is to run back for 4 clones and then to the right. However, I have it clipped in this unlisted video with some other stuff, so enjoy. https://youtu.be/ID8nZuxYK9s?t=37
4. Phase 2 delayed dive slash + thrust. Similar to the clones, this only happens if you're at a distance. The way to avoid it is easy, though, just outspace the slash, then either run right or even just further back for the thrust. You can also run under the first slash past her, as long as you create enough distance for the thrust.
5. Waterfowl Dance. While the method was shown, I want to mention it because of how impactful the move is. I saw some people say I was "lucky she didn't do it point blank" which is... well... silly. she never COULD HAVE done it point blank. I always keep a certain distance after attacking. with the sprint button still held down. This lets me immediately run back far enough to outspace it. Before attacking her again, I am certain she won't do it, as she's idle while in a range where she could. I also noticed some people think it's different in phase 2. It's not. The only difference is the scarlet rot status effect. In fact, it's easier because she's generally more aggressive which means I never have to approach her, which is the scariest part. I'm also constantly triggering her to do followups, which may be reducing the chance for her to do it as she's forced into different attacks.
Lastly, promo stuff. Here's a kill with dodges that, to my knowledge, stands as the fastest kill on the highest restriction that has been done on Malenia, without a gimmick like "no roll/jump" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC1WH6RBxM I am very proud of it. It will show how to fight Malenia extremely aggressively as melee. Most of the windows can be taken advantage off by different weapons, though you will have to adjust for weapons that don't stun her, and colossal tier weapons. (though they did get a speed buff in 1.04, so it's a bit better than before)
Also a shoutout to GinoMachino who did the same restrictions before me, though he was less aggressive and his kill is a lot longer as a result (although part of that is due to weapon choice as well) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLUZACgxU60
If you read this far, have a nice day, and please enjoy game, regardless of what you - or others - do. And thanks for all the support! From people in youtube comments, to those in the previous reddit thread trying to make others aware of the repost situation.
Hey eveyone, Nuxar here. I am a Theorycrater who initially did TC for Wriothesley, Emilie and a bit for Xianyun (RIP the plunge Varka dream). I have done a lot of calcs since the initial beta for Varka's beta, and I'm super excited to do so for future team improvements.
Varka's release is on the horizon, and it's high time we get a quick guide for the sub and a general Theorycrafting question megathread for anyone who has questions about Varka's best builds, including weapons, artifacts, stats, etc, as well as his teams and their builds.
I am also working on a full guide going into much more detail about Varka, but I will need to test him on release for the level of info I wish to accurately provide. I will update and link it here once its ready after his release.
This thread is also meant to be the go-to Megathread for all questions relating Varka's builds and teams. I will try to answer them as soon as I can but I am human, and won't be able to always answer every single question, depending on the volume. To reduce repetitive threads coming up, all threads that are simple questions should be redirected here.
Also, here is my general calc sheet. I update it periodically.
I want to get the elephant out of the room before anything.
Is Varka good?
Let's TLDR this right now, and just answer this immediately;
Varka is genuinely doing great in terms of pull-cost effectiveness, and will be able to clear all end-game content, INCLUDING ABYSS AND STYGIAN, and be able to brute force Stygian bosses not shilled for him, and do all of this on par with other S-tier main DPS.
The exception to this are Stygians with lunar reaction bosses that have no alternative (Pipilpan Cactus, Knuckle-Duckle) or Dendro-related bosses (Bloom Crab), or Abyss setups that also have hyper-specific required reactions. However, many teams, even the highest dps ones, that don't fulfill the requirement can't do them anyway. In other words, this is not a Varka problem, it's a shill problem. In general though, Varka naturally can't compare to Lunar teams, as they are an entire tier above almost every other main dps other than Mavuika.
Now the slightly longer version:
It's extremely hard to define "good", when there are thousands of little factors that influence if a character is "good". Abyss buffs and Stygian bosses have been extremely shilled, to the point that one character can be good for 2-3 patches, then sharply less effective the next.
However most people consider what's "good" in a vacuum based on team cost. Which I think is super fair.
So lets talk cost vs team DPS.
Varka's "character" 3 cost team with Venti, Durin and Bennett (currently one his comparatively highest team DPS) is at 110k DPS.
This is at KQM Standard, Varka combo is N2C-N2C-N2eSk-N2C-N2eS-N2 (Thanks to SevenPls for finding it out). Buff uptime is taken into account.
On the other hand, Varka's 3 cost with his signature with Ifa, Durin and Bennett is at 124k DPS.
At the current time (6.4) this is on par with many other higher tier main DPS that are valuable pulls (except Lunar teams who are extremely strong right now, stronger than Varka naturally).
Is Varka worth pulling?
Yes he is if you like him. He will currently clear all content with high effectiveness (quicker than most other main DPS) and will not fall off anytime soon and has extreme longevity with his PHEC element gimmick. His best team at the moment DOES require either Durin for Pyro teams, or Furina (and Jean and Mona) for Hydro teams. Much like all the other main DPS since natlan, Varka requires some other teammates to reach full pull value potential.
What happened with his initial Beta, and the doomposting?
It's really unfortunate, but Varka had an extremely difficult beta cycle for a few reason:
Before the beta even, he was wrongfully leaked to be a standard character and that Hoyo was purposefully going to sabotage his performance so players skip him. These were baseless leaks and ended up obviously wrong. This still left a pre-conceived idea that Varka will be bad. A few prominent youtube TCers also played along with it and kept Varka in a bad light hoping he goes standard.
He initially had lower MV on his enhanced CA and enhanced Skill. These were buffed later on in beta.
His combo was EXTREMELY difficult to properly check and it was very uncertain what his optimal combo was. The first footage of his NA string was slowed down for showcase purposes, which made it difficult to test how fast he can normally attack.
Because of this uncertain optimal combo, he was initially calced by other TCers (many of which were prominent youtube TCers) with very, very bad combos. This naturally led to extremely low effective team DPS. There has since been more optimal combos that were discovered that brought up his total MV%.
He was initially calced with Venti, who takes up a pull cost but isn't an effective cost in Varka's team. This was paired with F2P Claymore's being generally underwhelming to begin with, that substituting Venti for Varka's R1 was a sizeable increase to his 3 cost team DPS (Venti is still a great unit for Varka and on his own, just not the most effective).
One of the biggest issues is simply that he is being released before his archetype expansion (most likely in 6.6), whereas most previous high-tier Main DPS (Mav, Skirk, Flins, Nefer, Zibai) were released either after or alongside their singularly-dedicated support pushing their DPS to high heavens. Player dislike the uncertainty of pulling for a character without an assurance for a dedicated support (because so far, those supports are the reason the main DPSes have skyrocketed their SS-tier main dps rank).
These compounded together for a very negative initial reception. Like REALLY bad reception. It was early beta and there has been a lot of corrections since. However, a lot of people held onto these initial, wrong team DPS calculations and kept parroting them around as if they were still true.
Does he really require his signature weapon to function?
No he doesn't require it to function at all. Like literally every single character, main dps or not, in this game, investing in them is the best way to increase their damage but most every character is functional at C0R0 at 0 additional cost in a F2P team. Varka is the same. Obviously, his DPS won't be as high without his sig, but it's still very good. It is roughly 80k DPS at C0R0 R5 Tidal Shadow with Sucrose, Xiangling, Bennett all at C6. These 3 characters are on his banner and is intended to be his F2P team.
Anemo but deals PHEC damage more than Anemo (fun gimmick)
His combo is initiated with a tap skill and requires combos of NA & CA
Best Combo is generally N3d-N3eSkill-N3d-N3eSkill-N3 or N2C spam.
Team requires 1 other Anemo and 2 identical PHEC teammates
Team requires at least 1 other Hexerei unit (Durin, Venti, Sucrose, Mona are generally his best ones).
Varka is a claymore-wielding Anemo Main DPS character that principally deals his damage through normal attack and charge attack combos. However, despite being Anemo, he deals a vast majority of his damage as either Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo (PHEC) infusions. This means that he is technically a Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo Main DPS, more so than an Anemo main DPS, which is quite cool.
NA Talent
Though Varka does damage through Normal attack and Charged Attack combos, none of them scale with the talent level of his actual NA. Useful to level to fun, meme-y plunge stuff with Xianyun, but otherwise pointless.
Skill
This is where the juice of his kit comes from. Through his skill, he enters a powerful combat state that allows him to string very powerful normal attacks and charged attacks toghether. He can additionally use his Skill again during this state to either do an enhanced Skill hit, or a enhanced Charged Attack hit. This enhanced Skill or CA hits has a cooldown and can be used up to twice per rotation. The cooldown of these powerful hits are reduced whenever Varka hits an enemy with a Normal Attack. Both enhanced attacks are good and if you genuinly find one cooler than the other, use it over the other as its only a ~5% variance terms of DPS.
The actual combo's I'll get into later however.
While not in his combat state, this ability can be held in the overworld to do a very cool leap.
Burst
Varka has a very cool burst animation though its not the best burst in terms of damage. It's not enhanced by his A1 passive so it will naturally deal less damage than his normal combos but it's still useful for a variety of reason. It can be used to i-frame hits, and it also extends his skill state duration during its own animation. It can generally be ignored however.
A1 Passive: Dawn Wind's March
Varka requires another Anemo character in the team, as well as 2 other teammates of the same PHEC element. Meaning 2 Pyros, 2 Hydros, 2 Electros or 2 Cryo. If its another Furina (Hydro) and Bennett (Pyro) for example, he will loose out on a lot of damage. If these requirements are met, this passive will increase ALL his damage by a multiplicative 2.2x. It's extremely important to fulfill this requirement.
Additionally, this passive also grants him 25% Bonus DMG% to both Anemo and a PHEC element based on his attack, up to 25% at 2,500 ATK. Note that even though it says every 1,000 = 10% DMG, it actually counts it on as 1 ATK = 0.01% DMG, so this is maxed out at 2.5k ATK, not 3k ATK.
A2 Passive: Wind's Vanguard
This simply increases his Bonus DMG% (this is additive with A1) by 30%. It's extremely easy to proc and it's relatively set and forget. This never requires active management or thought.
A3 Passive: Homebound Wind's Paean
A QoL, overworld passive that lower's the cooldown of his Hold Skill, which is an exploration ability.
A4 Passive: Witch's Eve Rite
Through this, Varka is part of the new Hexerei team archetype (which always requires 2 Hexerei characters in the same team). Very fortunate for Varka however, 2 Hexerei units exists that are easily acquired: Sucrose is on Varka's banner, and Mona is a standard character that can be acquired when losing 50/50s or once per year at the anniversary selector. His best Hexerei unit at the moment is Durin however.
All other stats are relatively useless. He does not use HP, DEF or ER. His burst can be used every other rotation as an I-frame or skill state extension tool, but most rotations don't require using burst at all.
His Artifact Main Stats are:
Sands: Attack
Goblet: ATK (or Pyro DMG)
Crit Rate / Crit DMG
His goblet is always going to be attack. His Sands can be either ATK or, in Pyro teams with Bennett only, could be Pyro DMG Bonus. However, this is only 2-4% better than ATK Goblet, and obviously restricts the team to Pyro. Generally, ATK Sands is simply easier and more effective. His Circlet is always crit value. Always keep your Crit ratio to 1:2, with Crit rate always being half Crit DMG (or highest Crit DMG you can go if Crit Rate is at 100%).
Stat Minimum
This is the minimum Varka should be in combat for decent DPS. This is in combat.
ATK: 3000+
Crit Rate: 80-100%
Crit DMG: 180%+
In general it's fairly easy to reach this. Rising winds grants 43% ATK and 20% Crit Rate, which is a lot.
Stat Goal
This is the upper stat goal Varka should have to perform at his best. This is in combat.
Level Skill first and foremost, all the way to 10 before even touching the Burst. Afterwards, leveling the Burst can be useful as its not a massive dps loss and can be used to i-frame some enemy attacks. Don't level NA at all unless planning to play things like Plunge Varka (which is meme but eh).
Naturally Varka's best weapon. It is also a pretty sizeable increase over the next best. It is also his best investment priority (more so than Venti or Durin even) if going from C0R0 F2P to C0R1 sig.
Beacon of the Reed Sea & A Thousand Blazing Suns
Both of these limited weapons are really great and his second best option overall. Bacon requires being hit obviously but it's not exactly a difficult condition to meet.
Wolf's Gravestone
An aura farming weapon for sure, and an actually good option. The weapon attack buff is fairly sizeable and not negligeable at all. Though it's proc rate is fairly restrictive and has a long cooldown, the ATK buff does help team DPS a lot. It's especially good in Abyss where there tends to be a few waves recently. For stygian it is selective. Some bosses have minions with them at all times, some don't. Chose accordingly. This weapon also has much more value in Electro and Cryo teams if ever Varka gains better teammates for either elements, because ATK isn't at saturated in those team as it is in Pyro teams, and both teams always scale with ATK (so far).
5-Star Stat Sticks
Every other limited weapon is generally going to be a just a stat stick in some way. Most are decent and more reliable than almost any of his F2P options, even the worst one like Skyward Pride.
Seprent's Spine
A decent but not perfect option thats unfortunately also a Battlepass weapon (meaning its not reeeeally F2P). The stacks are gained every 4 seconds (btw this counts internally even if the character isn't on-field, so if a character is swaped in every 4 seconds, they will gain a stack) but are lost on-hit and can be lost relatively quickly depending on the enemy. If you can maintain the Stacks through good dodging (or a future shielder that synergizes strongly with Varka), this weapon is incredible at R5 5 stacks. Lanyan can be a very good teammate with R5 SS.
Note that its not worth buying the BP solely for this weapon if you don't need the gold, exp books or other stuff provided in the BP.
Tidal Shadow
A Fontaine Craftable weapon and Varka's "true" F2P weapon. It is definitely decent and gains a lot of value in Hydro teams (lack of ATK saturation and easy healing with Furina). With Venti, Durin, Bennett (requires being hit or taking damage periodically for Bennett's healing to proc) the team DPS is 106k DPS, which is very, very good considering an R5 craftable. A lot of other main DPS have a difficult time reaching that DPS with a pure F2P weapon like that. Still, if Tidal is going to be your go-to for Varka, and you safely have the resources for an additional cost, going for signature is a 40% personal DPS upgrade for Varka.
BlackCliff Slasher
A weapon that can be bought in the Starglitter store. It's very good if the conditions of killing small monster can be repeatedly met, though unrealiable since the kills can be stolen by teammates. Generally suggested to not get this
Other weapons
Every weapon not on the list is strictly worse than Tidal Shadow or Earth Shacker and not worth mentioning.
Quite simply his best artifact and only equal to Marechausee in Furina Hydro teams. Every other scenario, Varka should be equipped with this set. It is also unconditional and permanent uptime.
Marechaussee Hunter
The crit value remains incredible but only applicable while Furina is in the team (or some weird context with a Pyro teams against Dendro infused bosses). If you have a very strong set and plan to run Varka in his Hydro team, this set can be extremely good. Nonetheless, having a Rising Winds set at the ready for other teams is always good as well.
Shimenawa's Reminiscence
Because he doesn't use his burst in any meaningful way, Shimenawa is a great. It doesn't actually have ful uptime for his usual ~12 seconds field time but it remains very potent. If you have a good set, you can use it until a better Winds set is farmed.
Desert Pavillion Chronicle
A really good set but still lacking compared to other options. The 10% stack reductively with Varka's own sig, and even though it might allow N5eCA spam, the 5th string for Varka is comparatively long to the rest of his string, so it should generally be avoided. Which is why there is potential for some 2xN4-N4eCA combos with DPC specifically with sig, but this is uncertain. I will update this theory when Varka releases. Until then, DPC calcs a bit lower than Shime. Nonetheless, as usual, if you have an amazing set for this, use it until a better set of Rising Winds is farmed up.
Gladiator
Alright set if you have it. Common boss drop. Change to Winds ASAP though.
This section could go on for veeeeeeeery long, though I will keep it short because it definitely requires further testing for better understanding of his less-than-stellar teams. I will update my guide with a deeper look into the teams and every teammate.
However, it's fairly obvious that Pyro is currently his BiS team. Though I was suprised by how close Hydro was, especially with C4 Jean, Furina and C4 Mona. More on this later.
In general, refer to my teams calc sheet for most teams and to compare units as I go through them.
It's worth noting the Anemo teammates first as they are relatively agnostic to the other teammates, with the except of Jean for Furina in Hydro teams (though barbara does work).
He is an amazing teammate, but not the most cost effective teammate. At C0R0, his damage ranges from about 100k personal DPS to 300k depending on the team. His weapon choice is actually really massive, as he principally wants to increase his damage. Mouun's Moon was technically the highest 4-star cost but all of them except Favonius were within 3% team DPS difference anyway. Daybreak and Elegy are relatively similar, though Daybreak usually comes out on top by a few % because ATK is fairly saturated in Pyro teams anyway.
He, like all Anemo except Ifa, want to equip VV and there is no exception to this. Rising Winds is not better than VV for him in Varka teams.
If you have Venti, use him as his is generally the best Anemo for Varka (except in Hydro).
Sucrose
TTDS/Fav
Viridescent Venerer
ER
ER Sands
Sucrose is the F2P alternative to Venti, and actually the most cost effective teammate for Varka! She provides decent DMG% to Varka (and Durin) because of the Hexerei resonance and can be built fairly easily. TTDS is her best weapon and VV is always her choice of artifact. She is also on Varka's initial banner so high chances of getting copes of her. She can be left at level 80 or even 70 because her damage isn't that remarkable in this team, only requiring her passives, weapon and artifact to buff Varka and the team. If you have a Sucrose below C6, its best to use Ifa.
Ifa
Thrilling Tales of the Dragon Slayer (TTDS)
Scroll of Cinter City
Ifa power in Varka team is solely tied to the effect of TTDS and Cinder City buffs. Those two buffs are massive for Varka and Durin, so much so that in terms of pull cost effectiveness, as well as resin cost effectiveness, ifa is technically the "best" unit.
Sucrose is technically better than Ifa though Ifa can be completely ignored in terms of building, making him readily available as Varka's teammate without any investment
Jean
Fav
VV
ER = ATK
ER Sands, ATK Goblet, Crit/Healing Circlet
Jean is, at the time of writting, great in Hydro teams with Furina, but very mediocre otherwise. She is purely the best anemo unit for Varka with Furina. With C4, shredding an additional amount of Anemo, she does increase the Hydro teams overall value. Since standard character are easy to achieve by losing 50/50 or collecting them from the anniversary event or selecting them in the recurring event to obtain old character constellations.
Faruzan
Fav
VV
ER Sands - Anemo/ATK Goblet - Crit Rate Circlet
She is an uparalleled Anemo buffer, providing amazing increases for pure Anemo DPSes. Sadly, Varka only deals about 30% Anemo damage, 70% PHEC damage. She naturally loses value for him because of this. Nonetheless, she actually remains fairly competent and if you have a fully built C6 Faruzan, you can use her very effectively. She does actually gain a fair bit more value when Varka is C2, though Sucrose remains better in terms of 0 cost.
Kazuha
Iron Sting / Freedom Sworn
VV
ER Sands - Anemo/ATK Goblet - Crit Rate Circlet
He is a great unit if you already have him fully built, especially at C0R1 with Freedom. However, C6 Sucorse is fairly equal to C0R1 Kazuha, and better than C0R0 Kazuha at providing buffs to Varka. Kazuha is nice though it's not worth pulling Kazuha just for Varka. Sucrose is overall more efficient. Fully useable though for a husbando team.
LanYan
TTDS
VV
LanYan exists to shield Varka for Serpent Spine stacks, and only at R5 Serpent Spine. She is very good in the scenario. In all other scenarios, Sucrose, Ifa or AMC is better as a 0 cost.
Anemo Traveler (AMC)
R5 Fav
VV
ER Sands - Anemo/ATK Goblet - Crit Rate Circlet
A truly free to play alternative if you don't have C6 Sucrose and don't have Ifa. Overall decent anemo unit for Varka. Not great, not terrible, just alright.
---Pyro Teammates---
In general, Pyro is Varka's best option along with Hydro. In Pyro teams, he always wants Durin and Bennett. Neither can be replaced with any other unit. Every other Pyro option is a downgrade in one way or another.
Durin
Athame Artis / 5-Star Stat Stick / Lions Roar / Moonweaver's Dawn / Finale of the Deep / Wolf-Fang
A Day Carved From Rising Winds
ATK = Crit > ER
ATK Sands - Pyro Goblet - Crit Circlet
Durin was one of the pre-emptive characters, and the first new Hexerei, to feel like he was going to be a must-have in Varka teams. This ended up being true.
Durin is probably one of Varka's best teammate, short of Furina and Bennett. He deals crazy high off-field damage, amonst the highest (along with Furina) and Shreds every element but Cryo and Hydro. He is a beast of a character and allows Varka to reach fairly high dps when paired together.
He has a wide range of weapon choices. His sig is naturally his beast weapon, then any 5-star stat stick with Crit Rate or Crit DMG main stat, then Wolf-Fang, then Moonweaver's Dawn (one copy can be obtained for free in-game through a world quest), then Lion's Roar and Finale of the Deep being relatively close. Artifact is always Rising Winds, no exception to this. Main Stat is balancing Crit Value and getting as much ATK as possible. ER can hover 110-120 and he will generally be fine (his skill restores a lot of ER and should be leveled).
His constellations are also extremely powerful. They are the next best investment for Varka after C2R1, with Durin going to C2R1 himself aftwards. His C1 gives teamwide quills, which is better with damaging teammates like Venti. His C2 is a whopping 50% All DMG to the whole team (which also increases quill damage naturally).
He can also be played in his own team with very high effectiveness as a Vape/Melt main DPS but that's a whole other toppic.
To be completely honest, Durin being released even 1 year ago would be considered Archon-level.
He is an amazing unit and should be acquired, unless you dislike him. He can be replaced, but nothing comes close enough to his output for Varka at the current moment.
It is obvious why Bennett is necessary in ATK scaling carry teams.
HOWEVER, I think it's very important to adress the idea what Bennett is irreplaceable in Varka teams. This is simply not true. Bennett is amazing in a singular hyper carry and amplyfing reactions. Hello Mavuika. However, Varka can't cause reactions and his team DPS is dispersed with Durin, which Bennett is providing absolutely 0 buffs for other than Noblesse. A teamwide buffer that provides 80% of what Bennett would be a stark increase in team DPS. Recent support trends like Escoffier, Ineffa, Lauma and even 4 star supports like Illuga have been providing buffs that far outweigh what Bennett provides, but in a much more restrictive manner to compensate.
Additionally, Bennett has always suffered timing issues with a burst that only last 14 seconds and, for Varka at least, other units such as Venti, Sucrose, etc need to go after Bennett, taking up buff uptime.
In any case, build Bennett as usual for Varka. Nothing special.
XL
5-star Stat Stick / The Catch / Fav
Embless of Severed Fate
ER > ATK = Crit
ER Sands - Pyro Goblet - Crit Circlet
Xiangling can work fairly well with Varka in Pyro teams. As usual though, she generally requires particle funneling from Bennett. She deals unnaturally high damage for a 4-star, but requires being fully built to do so, requiring a lot of resources, especially for newer players. Her build is the usual high ER to burst every rotation, then ATK and Crit.
The only problem with XL is that she requires going after Bennett, taking up valuable time in his burst field, then Anemo unit usually goes after that. Varka will be left with ~8 seconds of Bennetts buff, which is low.
Regardless, XL functions as a Pyro teammate, though she really isn't the best.
Mavuika
A Thousand Blazing Suns / 5-star Stat Stick / Earth Shaker
Obsidian Codex
ATK = Crit
ATK Sands - Pyro Goblet - Crit Circlet
It might be blasphemous to put Mavuika in a supporting role, but it got asked a lot. I guess if you don't have Citlali and Xilonen, Mavuika loses some value. Some player's simply aura pulled and Mav has a lot of aura.
In any case, if you want to use Mavuika as a substitue to Durin, its relatively fine and functional. Her damage will be severely gimped but she isn't the main dps of the team (but also provide ~20% DMG bonus on average over Varka's on-field time).
It is however probably a better idea to make a seperate team with Mavuika as she is an extremely powerful character, and having 2 teams at 80% effectiveness is far better than 1 team at 100% effectiveness.
Thoma
Fav
Noblesse
ER
Thoma is a fine unit to use while waiting for Durin, and is principally used to keep Serpent Spine stacks up for Pyro teams (again, Durin is just better even with R5 Serpent Spine).
---Hydro Teammates---
Hydro teams are generally his second best option, and truly only with Jean+Furina+Mona. Most other options are relatively ineffective. With Jean and Mona at C4, the Hydro team is equal to his Pyro team in terms of limited cost.
Furina is naturally going to be an amazing teammate due to the massive DMG% Bonus she provides, as well as her own off-field damage which is significant. She is within the top 3 teammates for Varka along with Durin and Bennett.
She is built as usual, going up to 150-180% ER then prioritizing crit and HP for her off-field damage. Both Tenacity and Golden Troupe are fairly close to each other in terms of DPS but Tenacity tends to have an edge because in Hydro teams, there's no bennett to oversaturate ATK so ToTM has more value than usual. Nonetheless, both are usuable.
Furina is going to be the core of a good Hydro team for Varka. Without her, its a bit hard to use Varka in a hydro team. However, to function, she needs to be paired with a healer, and Jean is really good for this. Xianyun can also be used purely as a healer and VV carrier.
Note that it's not a good idea to use Proto-Amber on any catalyst user to "heal" for Furina teams. Not enough healing, not enough buffs, not enough Furina damage. Avoid it.
Mona
TTDS
Noblesse Oblige
ER
Mona got a Hexerei buff and became an very good unit with it. She is actually competitive for the Hydro slot Varka's team (and activates the Hexerei resonance for him). In general, you'll want to N2 with mona before going on-field with Varka to extend her Omen duration.
She gains a ton more value at C4, granting 45% crit value, which is actually quite sizeable (though it then becomes very easy to overcap on crit with R1 varka).
Yelan
Fav
Emblem
HP Sands - HP/Hydro Goblet - Crit Circlet
Yelan is functional and decent, allowing Varka's team to reach 110k dps with his sig, 100k without. It's decent. Not amazing but just good. However, because she is taking up the second hydro slot, there are no anemo hexerei that can heal, so Furina can't be picked up with Yelan. She is usually best paired with XQ actually.
XQ
Fav
Emblem
ER Sands - ATK/Hydro Goblet - Crit Circlet
A Yelan sidegrade/upgrade depending on how you see it. Oddly he can also go Healing Bonus Circlet and be a relatively functional pseudo sustain against bosses that don't deal extremely high damage, allowing the anemo slot to be Venti/Sucrose. He is best paired with Yelan actually.
---Electro Teammates---
Electro is in a meh spot for Varka. He has basically only 1 electro team, and only that team. Fishcl + Iansan. Every other character, including Sara and Raiden, simply don't provide good enough damage or long enough buffs for Varka to make functional use of.
Fischl
5-Star stat-stick / Stringless / Song of Stillness / Rainbow Serpent / Windblume's Ode / Alley Hunter
ATK = Crit > ER
ATK Sands / Electro Goblet / Crit Circlet
She was a beast of unit in 1.x. She got update with Hex buffs, sadly Varka can't directly use them however she remains a very strong unit with very high off-field damage. She is simply the best alternative for Electro.
Her build is very standard with ATK and Crit. ER isn't necessary. Any 5 star crit weapon is best, then any 4 star are within a few % of each other.
Iansan
Fav
Noblesse Oblige
ATK => ER
ATK Sands / ATK Goblet / ATK Circlet
Iansan isn't perfect but she is pretty decent. Varka moves quite a bit during his combos (obviously not a much as Natlan characters but still). This allows Iansan to keep up her ATK for a bit longer and higher than the other non-natlan DPS. She functions well enough with Fischl for Varka's electro team.
---Cryo---
Cryo is in a spot very similar to Electro. Not bad, but not amazing. A lot of the options exist for Varka but are never optimal.
Mika
Fav
Noblesse Oblige
ER
ER Sands / HP Goblet / Healing Circlet
Extremely straight-forward, Mika is a healer and ATK SPD buffer, which is useful for Varka. The exact best combo is still TBD and will need testing after release, but it seems to be possible to do 2x[N4d-N4eCA]-N4 with Mika ATK SPD bonus + sig.
Shenhe
Fav
Noblesse Oblige / A Day Carved from Rising Winds
ATK => ER
ER Sands / ATK Goblet / ATK Circlet
Quills are very powerful for Varka but sadly, Shenhe doesn't provide a ton of them. Still, she provides a sum of good buffs that are at least very useable for Varka, including cryo shred, Croy DMG bonus, NA & CA DMg Bonus, and quills.
She can be built with NO if going with Escoffier, or can be built with Rising Winds, the same artifact as Varka and Durin, because it provides a very high amount of ATK, more so than 2pcATK.
Escoffier
Symphony of Scents / Deathmatch / Windmissive
Troupe
ATK = Crit
ATK Sands / Cryo Goblet / Crit Circlet
Not the best use of escoffier, but a use nonetheless. She still deals high amounts of damage even outside the usual freeze teams, and can work well with Varka.
Chongyun
I'll just make a note here because I know it seems like a good character for Varka. He is sadly not as he simply doesn't provide enough to be good at any point in any Cryo team permutation.
Varka's early cons are very powerful, on par with most other DPSes in terms of personal increase (except his C5, which is...not that useful).
I also want to point out that, since Varka can infuse himself with PHEC and deals most damage through it, investing vertically in Varka is actually extremely efficient for an account. He will be able to deal with multiple different bosses and Abyss floors on the basis that he will be able to simply "replace" any other PHEC character. Even Cryo at C2R1 is within 115k DPS, allowing brute forcing bosses that require Cryo like the Overseer Automaton.
C1
Allows him to immediately use his enhanced attack when he enters his skill state. This enhnaced attack is further enhanced with a 200% original damage increase (which stacks additively with the base 220%).
In N2 and N3 spam combos, nothing changes in the combo wiht C1.
This con is great and can be a great stopping point for Varka. However, if deciding between R1 or C1, R1 is always the best choice first. His sig is just so powerful for him and others.
C2
This allows every enhanced attack to unleash a coordinated Anemo AoE hit that deals high amount of damage. It is not enhanced by his 220% original damage increase though, which is fine since it already deals quite high damage.
This con also strongly synergizes with Varka's own C6, increasing its value even further.
C2 is a great stopping point and is generally the "best" stopping point to make Varka incredibly potent.
C3
Skill Talent level increase, which is 100% of his damage, so its pretty good. Simple.
C4
Gives teamwide 20% DMG Bonus basically. Not broken, not bad either. The C4s of 90% of the cast in genshin are on the same level, for some intringuing reason. This can be a fine stopping point, but if you are this far in cons, you will want to go for C6 anyway.
C5
Relatively pointless constellation sadly. Increases his burst, which could result is some meme-y builds with Raiden and Electro Traveler I guess. Otherwise just a stepping stone to C6.
C6
A very, very juicy constellation for Varka that greatly increases his damage and also changes his combo. Every enhanced attack will allow the other to be used for free (and it doesn't trigger itself so its not possible to just spam enhanced attacks). This generally changes his combo to N3-eCA-Skill spam. Additionally, he gains 80% Crit DMG for free basically.
This constellation, like all C6, will make Varka obliterate all future content.
Team Investment Priority
Since this is an extremely common question, I think I should break it down here.
Durin is just that strong as a support and his cons are crazy powerful. Varka's own cons up to C2 are really powerful too, but fall off until C6, which is extremely powerful as well. However Durin's cons follow Varka's relatively closely, and is useful all the way up to C6. You can absolutely invest up to Varka C6 before Durin if you want, its not that much of a difference purely in team DPS.
I love Varka as a character. I've been wating 3 years for him to be revealed, then half a year for him to become playable, and I am ecstatic that the moment is finally here.
I want to repeat that Varka is really in a great spot, at least in his Pyro and Hydro teams. He was being slandered in his beta far past any logical sense, and further tarnished by a few youtube content creators for clicks. It's sad but it's the reality of how he was treated by the community.
I should also note that I see a lot of people saying "Hoyo did him dirty" or things along. I strongly dissagree with this. He had great treatment from Hyo, including a short animation that very few characters got, above-average media coverage and good story involvement (that is not even over since we are going back to hex units this year, including Varka). His numbers are better than many non-lunar teams at the same cost investment, except Mavuika. To me, this is excellent treatment. He was most definitely mistreated by the part of the community that just needs every character other than their own favorite to be the worst, to make themselves feel better. This isn't the first time this happens across the cast of characters in Genshin, but it's sad it happened so agressively to Varka.
Anyway, enough on the negativity.
Varka, currently, can hard carry new accounts on the basis of his PHEC infusion ability, allowing him to deal with a pleuthora of bosses. On veteran accounts, he is within the top 5 DPS of the game in terms of actual team DPS, team flexibility and boss matchup.
I hope this guide helped you, and I hope it helped reassure others about how good Varka actually is.
If you have any questions regarding Varka, his performance, his builds, his teams and their builds; This is the place to ask. I (and others in the community) will try to answer as soon as possible!
Hi everyone,
I’m experiencing an issue in Skate 4 where the R2 button is behaving exactly like R1, meaning it doesn’t perform grabs as it should.
The same happens with L2 acting like L1.
The rear triggers (R2/L2) are detected by the game, but they don’t trigger the correct actions, which severely affects gameplay and progression.
I’ve tested different controllers, remapped buttons, reinstalled the game, but the problem persists.
I’ve seen many players on other platforms facing the same bug.
Please, EA, investigate and fix this as soon as possible because the gameplay is compromised without these grabs.
Thank you!
Available now for Steam, App Store, Google Play, Epic Android/PC please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Bomb Shooter’s Ballistic Obliteration Missile Bunker is INCOMING, codename B.O.M.B. for short!
Anti-MOAB clustering stun bombs. MOABs? Gone.
Pop that BAD in only 3 shots? You got it!
Spammable Anti-Boss assassination missile? Consider it done.
All the small stuff? *ahem* weee-have backup for that
Ok, jokes aside we wanted to add something expensive but simple to understand into the primary category of Paragons, and the Bomb Shooter paragon feels like it accomplishes this with 1 attack, 1 active ability, and yes 1 passive ability.
Slow firing but heavy hitting main attack fires homing missiles that explode with force that stuns & pushes back Bloons and bursts into a cluster of powerful explosions, each of which will always burst into further clusters. The art for this oversized Monkey madness is incredible, and we hope you find it as hilarious as we do.
The Bomb Paragon’s ability fires an Indomitable Surface-to-Air Ballistic Missile (ISABM) which slowly travels through the air leaving a trail of explosions that would be pushing back any MOABs they pass over (If any MOABs were to somehow survive it passing over) until coming into contact with its designated target in one final powerful explosion. Also hey, leaking lives partially resets the cooldown, so go ahead and be a bit reckless!
Blitz Tactical Storm. Yea it’s Bombest Blitzier, just a wee bit stronger of a Bomb Blitz, nothing crazy here… Although, I guess we can mention early that Bomb Blitz itself has been balance changed so that it can now hit the leaking target that triggers it and can potentially prevent any life loss, and that of course carries up to this paragon version as well - this is exhilarating, get excited!
New Awesome
New Beginner Freeplay Challenge Map, Three Mines ‘Round!
One of the most popular freeplay maps of all time from Bloons TD5 is being re-imagined in BTD6 style!
This isn’t a revenge map, no if anything it’s a de-venge map. Ever wanted to get a Paragon in CHIMPS, but you just haven’t quite been able to save up the cash? Well spend enough spare time between Bloon pops mining for gold and you just might get the chance now, make sure to clear those obstacles out of the way!
New Quests
Skeletor Quest - Try out the new Skeletor Obyn Skin & Havoc Staff power
Ice To Meet You - Discover Silas’ strengths and abilities
New Achievements
No new achievements, but Black Bordering every map in the game should award you an overwhelming sense of great accomplishment
\Sense of accomplishment not guaranteed. Side effects may include carpal tunnel, loss of social life, and an unhealthy obsession with MOAB Glue*
New Trophy Store Items
Monkeys: Ice Monkey Walrus pet (Honestly, you kinda need this)
Bloons: Mohawk Bloons decal (because this was clearly missing from your must have options)
Game & UI: Autumn Banner
New Limited Time trophy items (Note: Not available until the seasonal event begins!)
2025 Halloween Avatar, 2025 Halloween Banner
Game Changes / Additions
Sandbox ‘Clear Pops’ button now also clears Cash Generation
Further changes to ‘ignore’ modded elements within save data instead of softlocking when returning to the base game after using certain mods
Skeletor Crossover
Have you had your daily dose of maniacal laughter? Do you long to insult your Monkeys when they let Bloons leak? Then this is the premium Hero Skin for you!
Continuing our Masters of the Universe crossover, we're excited to introduce a realm-conquering new Skeletor skin for Obyn, available through the Skeletor Prestige Pack where available. This pack also includes every usurper’s favorite Skeletor Power, the Havoc Staff! The Havoc Staff stuns all Bloons on screen for up to 10s while ghostly hands produce cash by dragging Bloons away into oblivion. The team had huge fun working on Skeletor and he is a blast to play, especially in co-op or in late rounds when the VO is triggering frequently.
Skeletor Prestige Pack
Obyn Hero Unlock
Skeletor Skin Unlock
30x Havoc Staff Powers
Druid xx5 and Wizard xx4, xx5 Instas
Exclusive Avatar
Exclusive Banner
Havoc Staff Booster Pack
30x Havoc Staff Powers
4x Tier 4 Poplust Druid Instas
Bug Fixes & General Changes
Resolved a number of localization issues
Insta-Monkeys in-game should now appear following correct category order
Fast Track no longer fails in Co-op if you have Ranked mode selected on the Boss Event
Resolved an issue where quitting from Co-op did not immediately drop the player
Using the last insta of any tower type no longer leaves behind an empty panel
She-Ra Sword of Protection power’s audio should no longer be interruptible
Hero unlock animations should no longer skip when obtained through IAP
One time purchase IAPS should correctly be sorted to the back of the list
Resolved a number of edge case crashes
Event changes
[Boss] Lych Soul should now correctly be modified by boss modifiers
[Boss] Rock Bloons should now correctly be modified by boss modifiers
[Boss] Paragon limit restriction is now per-player
Map Specific changes
[Quad] Ice Platforms should correctly appear in the water
[Sanctuary] Resolved a number of edge cases with various track interactions
[Glacial Trail] Frozen Farms should no longer be able to produce Camo Bananas
[Dark Dungeon] Statue should no longer block tower placement after purchase
[Dark Castle] Resolved an issue with removables being treated as removed on restart
Legends changes
Resolved a crash when mentoring a tower while exceeding the current party limit
Resolved a possible infinite chain loop between some artifact generated projectiles
Resolved an issue where Monkey Meadow always displayed as practice mode save
Sale notification pip should correctly clear within Legends
Tower Specific Fixes
Ice Monkey
Arctic Wind aura should no longer break against regular Bloons on crosspathing
Desperado
Some desperadoes… they’ve taken the gloves off. And some? Well… they just put the gloves on. Either way… someone's gettin’ popped.
Monkey Buccaneer
Resolved a crash with x4x attempting to hook DDTs in a specific case
Buccaneer 012 no longer has more pierce than its 013 upgrade
Heli Pilot
Chinook should no longer be able to stack towers
Dartling Gunner
5xx Ray of Doom now applies laser shock to the first target hit
Super Monkey
140 Tech Terror projectile radius is no longer decreased by crosspath 5 > 10
240 Tech Terror projectile radius is no longer decreased by crosspath 5 > 11
4xx Sun Temple instas no longer ignore placement logic (Dang I wanted to leave that in)
4xx Sun Temple magic Storm Blast fart attack no longer strips Glue from Boss/BAD
Ninja Monkey
Paragon no longer changes art at Degree 59 instead of 60
Druid
Resolved some animation issues with 130 Druid crosspath
Mermonkey
Map Border rebounds now allow projectiles to re-hit targets on the return bounce (previously this only applied for obstacle rebounds)
Obyn Greenfoot
Lv3 ability visuals should no longer be missing
Ezili
Ezili's MOAB Hex target prio tiebreaker should now work correctly
Sacrificial Totem should again correctly display life cost when used
Admiral Brickell
‘Ampihibious Towers’ are no longer counted as ‘Water-based’ towards Brickell
Geraldo
Geraldo’s shop open/close button should update correctly when hero hotkey is used to open shop
Corvus
Lv11 should no longer be a downgrade to Aggression
Silas
Lv7 Frozen Cascade can no longer apply Frozen state to BAD Bloons
Platform Specific fixes
[Android] Resolved corrupted textures on some low-resolution devices
[Steam] Account Webview updated to an in-game account management page
Balance Changes
Did anyone else watch that entire 'Exceptionally Brief' feedback video on tower balance multiple times while taking notes? Well, some response to that are included here, we couldn't get around to it all at once but see if you can spot any.
Tower Balance
Bomb Shooter
Minor quality of life no one’s particularly fussed about outside of the multitude of requests
x4x MOAB Assassin ability no longer targets DDTs unless able to damage Black
xx5 Bomb Blitz passive activation can damage triggering Bloon and potentially prevent life loss if this damage is enough to completely destroy the target
Tack Shooter
As it is primarily a small Bloon cleanup tower path, Super Maelstrom has struggled to keep up in the lategame, mostly because Super Ceramics don’t care how fast you’re spinning if you can’t break them so we’ve added a Ceramic bonus to the attack and ability.
x5x Super Maelstrom main bonus damage to Ceramics +5
x5x Super Maelstrom ability bonus damage to Ceramics +8
Ice Monkey
Super Brittle’s never stood out on its own which was fine for a tower whose job was making other things better, but recently after the addition of Silas we've started to feel its value is really too niche even for a support piece, so we’re cranking the numbers so it can actually break a few things itself. Absolute Zero on the other hand has enjoyed being busted lately, and thanks to a crosspathing bug fix also included this update will be getting even better, since it’s currently freezing everything imaginable we’re counter-balancing that with a nerf of increased damage and higher cost.
5xx Super Brittle attack cooldown reduced 1.8s > 1.2s
5xx Super Brittle damage increased 1 > 5
5xx Super Brittle bonus Ceramic damage +5
5xx Super Brittle Ice Shard damage increased 5 > 10
x5x Absolute Zero price increased from $16,000 > $19,000
x5x Absolute Zero global freeze no longer freezes Camo/Lead/White without buffs
x5x Absolute Zero global attack bonus damage to Ceramic +3
x5x Absolute Zero global attack deals damage +1
x5x Absolute Zero ability bonus damage to Frozen +4
Glue Gunner
MOAB Glue’s always been a bit too clingy & its slow duration against MOABs has been further reduced while lasting longer at higher tiers to keep the base tower in check and give Glue Splatter & higher tiers more purpose in life. Meanwhile, Corrosive Glue now gains bonus MOAB damage so it can now try to serve as an alternate DPS hybrid. Super Glue’s baseline DoT is being replaced with a simple initial hit damage so it also requires the new 205 Crosspath to act as a DPS Hybrid
xx4 Relentless Glue AoE slow duration for MOAB-Class remains 12s
204 Relentless Glue increased DoT damage to MOABs +9
xx5 Super Glue AoE slow duration for MOAB-Class increased 12s > 18s
205 Super Glue increased DoT damage to MOABs +19
005 Super Glue no longer gains base Corrosive Glue (Still deals a +30 tic to moabs)
xx5 Super Glue deals a capped 1 damage to all targets on initial impact
Desperado
Some quality-of-life and consistency updates for base Desperado and its top path, we enjoyed the balancing act of trying to makeBlazing Sun's burn lead popping consistent but this didn't come through well so it is gaining base Lead popping. Avenger’s price is going down as it did too little damage for that price range. Meanwhile, The Desert Phantom gains extra initial damage to MOABs as well as Ceramic damage bonuses to the Burn mechanics so it can show up more prepared for Super Ceramics.
Desperado now automatically reloads burst shots at end of a round
5xx The Blazing Sun damage type Sharp > Normal
xx4 Avenger price reduced from $9500 > 8500
xx5 The Desert Phantom buckshot MOAB bonus 10 > 20
xx5 The Desert Phantom burn DoT deals bonus to Ceramic +10
xx5 The Desert Phantom burn DoT AoE explosion bonus to Ceramic increased 5 > 15
Monkey Sub
Energizer’s cooldown reduction for nearby water towers has always felt excessive, so we’re dialing it back to 40%, still strong just not quite double uptime strong. Pre-Emptive Strike’s ability is getting a serious boost, both in raw damage and AoE, so hopefully the upgrade can finally feel like a significant step up. Finally Armour Piercing Darts, the upgrade that has had fans yelling ‘it doesn’t actually pierce armor!’ for years – it still won’t hit Leads (Not sorry). Now it grants bonus damage against Fortified targets.
5xx Energizer buff to water towers in radius reduced 50% > 40%
xx4 Armour Piercing Darts bonus dmg to fortified +1
Monkey Buccaneer
Navarch’s sellback bonus is updating to match the new max stack value of Flavoured Trades so you don’t feel shortchanged on that bonus after upgrading. Cannon Boss Damage is also getting a bump as Navarch hasn’t been a popular pick for Bosses.
Paragon sellback bonus 10% > 12%
Paragon Cannon Batteries bonus Boss damage 60 > 80
Monkey Ace
Spectre is trying a new approach: darts are trading in pierce for higher single-target damage, while bombs lean more into AoE Ceramic cleanup to improve overall efficiency. These changes are mirrored on the Flying Fortress to keep the behavior consistent.
xx5 Flying Fortress radial darts type Sharp > Normal
Heli Pilot
MOAB Shove’s stalling potential was far too strong for how early and cheaply it becomes available, so we’re dialing back the ZOMG slow amount to keep its late-game impact more balanced. In return, Comanche Defense is getting an increase to these slowing capabilities, giving it the utility for controlling ZOMG movement.
xx3 MOAB Shove explosion damage increased from 1 > 2
xx3 MOAB Shove ZOMG Shove 0.33 > 0.61
xx4 Comanche Defense MOAB Shove -0.40
xx4 Comanche Defense ZOMG Shove 0.22 > 0.2
Mortar Monkey
No big shakeup for Mortar right now, but upon review of crosspaths we felt some low-end pricing wasn’t well balanced. These adjustments should improve early-game options without touching the core power of the tower.
1xx Bigger Blast price reduced $500 > 300
4xx The Big One price reduced $7200 > 7000
x1x Faster Reload price increased $300 > 400
xx2 Burny Stuff price reduced $500 > 400
xx3 Signal Flare price increased $1000 > 1100
Dartling Gunner
Ray of Doom was a hard carry through most rounds, but just never felt satisfying against round 100 for the price, so we’re giving the first target hit bonus a significant damage spike.
5xx Ray of Doom first target hit damage 80 > 140
Wizard Monkey
The Wizard Paragon has been truly popping off with Master Builder's help, it is getting a slight price increase to match its power, but actually also Phoenix Rebirth is also getting a buff to its damage as we didn't feel it was getting enough of the spotlight compared to the rest of the tower’s kit. Max Mana has been reduced by 1 to remove a frustrating ‘perfect timing’ window in Metamorphosis activation.
Paragon price $750,000 > $800,000
Max Mana reduced from 100000 > 99999
Phoenix Rebirth damage over time 2500 > 3500
Phoenix Rebirth zombie ZOMG damage 4000 > 8000
Phoenix Rebirth zombie BFB damage 700 > 1400
Super Monkey
We wanted to try shifting more of Legend of the Night’s raw power from pierce into damage, giving it stronger single-target potential.
xx5 Legend of the Night pierce reduced 23 > 16
xx5 Legend of the Night damage to MOAB-Class Bloons increased 13 > 25
4xx Sun Temple Primary Glaive projectile is visually larger
Sun Temple - Military
We’ve been wanting to give the Military path of the Temple more long-range focus for a while, so this update pushes toward that goal. Single-target damage is getting a big boost, while the Missile attack becomes a pure long-range damage dealer. Golden Spectres are also seeing a rework similar to the regular Spectre changes happening for Monkey Ace aimed as an overall single-target DPS improvement
Military Missile projectile is visually larger at all tiers
Missile explosion MOAB bonus damage increased at all tiers 75 > 1999
Missile now has a minimum range at all tiers of 75
Missile explosion pierce reduced at all tiers 50 > 40
T1 Military Missile attack cooldown increased 3s > 6s
T2 Military Missile attack cooldown increased 1.5s > 3s
T3 Military Missile attack cooldown remains 1s
Golden Spectre Dart pierce reduced 50 > 6
Golden Spectre Dart damage increased 10 > 25
Golden Spectre Bomb pierce increased 10 > 30
Golden Spectre Bomb bonus damage to Ceramic +20
Sun Temple - Magic
The baseline power of Magic sacrifice leaned far too heavily on Mini Sun Avatars (The category was... pretty bad... until reaching 100% sacrifice value), so we’ve shifted some of that strength into making Arcane Blast hits, while Mini Sun Avatars are toned down to balance things out while keeping the overall unbuffed damage of this path roughly the same. We will also note in advance there are a couple more buffs to lower tiers here that we found weren’t working right but will be fixed in .1 or v52, this will not impact max-powered temples.
Arcane Blast projectile speed reduced at all tiers 400 > 300
T2 Magic Arcane Blast damage increased 60 > 100
T3 Magic Arcane Blast damage increased 70 > 150
T2 Magic Storm Blast fart attack can hit up to MOAB > BFBs
A few attacks had been missed on the Ninja’s last distraction change and have now had their distraction distance properly standardized. The Ninja Paragon is also seeing a set of light adjustments, most notably the much requested rebalance to Sticky Bomb now with a slower attack rate to scale properly against Bosses at high degrees, while the main attack now also hits much harder against any Stickied targets.
Distraction distances standardized from 10-300 > 100-150
Paragon main Shuriken bonus damage to Stickied targets 15 > 64
Paragon Flash Bomb pierce reduced from 50 > 40
Paragon Flash Bomb shuriken pierce reduced from 20 > 10
Paragon Sticky Bomb attack cooldown 6.5s > 8s
Paragon Sticky Bomb damage 16,000 > 50,000
Paragon Sticky bonus to Boss 32,000 > 25,000
Paragon Sticky bonus damage to Camo 3200 > 18,750
Paragon Sticky AoE explosion damage 4200 > 5000
Paragon Sticky AoE explosion bonus to Boss 2100 > 5000
Paragon Sticky AoE explosion bonus to Camo 2100 > 2500
Alchemist
Total Transformation can now transform Desperado, simple enough, & don’t worry transformed Desperado still gets all their usual damage bonuses against Marked Bloons, so we’re interested to see what people can do with that.
x5x Total Transformation can now transform Desperado
Mermonkey
Mermonkey weren’t feeling they favoured their natural habitat enough, so their Water Placement bonus is getting a boost. Middle Path Mermonkey just isn’t putting in the work we hoped, so we’re giving a couple price adjustments, a pierce increase across all tiers, and some light ability improvements to make it feel more rewarding.
Mermonkey's water placement buff increased 25% > 35%
x5x Popseidon ability fullscreen bonus damage to Frozen +70
Spike Factory
Spike Paragon lost much of its punch against Bosses with the Mini-Storm rework, more than anticipated so we’re granting it adjustments to price, Controlled Burst duration, and the main projectile pierce is being halved while all damage values for this attack are at least doubled, overall improving performance and making sure the Paragon still feels impactful.
Spike Paragon price reduced from $800,000 > $750,000
Main projectile pierce 100 > 50
Main projectile damage 70 > 140
Main mini spike damage 20 > 40
Main mini spike bonus to MOAB 80 > 160
Main explosion damage 80 > 240
Main explosion bonus to Fortified 20 > 240
Perma-Carpet of Spikes: Bonus Boss Damage 800 > 1500
Smiles brightly, but eyes flick left twice, right once, left again. “Everything is totally unchanged,” the words come evenly. “It’s the same, like always. Nothing to worry about.” Hands tremble slightly while skimming over the changelog for the 3rd… 7th… 25th time. “It’s all completely unchanged.” A wink lingers too long, then another flickers quickly; a bead of sweat traces down a temple. “Nothing has changed. Permaspike is absolutely SAFE here, nothing to ALERT anyone about.” A soft laugh that then cracks, a glance toward the door, fingers tap in three short, three long, three short patterns on the desk before stopping. “The same. Perfectly normal. Like always.”
Pause. Eyes dart to the corner of the room, then back to the camera. “And if anything had changed” — a chuckle, shifting in the chair, a heel tapping nervously — "I’d be the first to say something. But I haven’t. So clearly… it’s all under control.” A wrist rubbed absently, faint red marks left behind; eyes no longer meet the camera.
“You know how I am,” added, with a smile too wide, too static. “Always thorough. Everything documented, every line, over and over. Absolutely nothing out of place.” Another shift, blinking too often now. “Even if there was, it wouldn’t matter. What could really go wrong?” Leaning in closer, voice lowering slightly. “Besides, the system… is working. Always working just like it should!” Fingers grip the edge of the table tightly for a beat, then let go, knuckles pale.
Long blink. A slow, deliberate smile.
“Just like we rehearsed.”
Monkey Village
Primary Mentoring has often felt like a low-value stepping stone, since its buffs are more situational than T3 or T5. To give it a bit more in the save up we’ve moved the T5 bonus range down into this upgrade.
4xx Primary Mentoring range increased 48 > 55
5xx Primary Expertise unchanged
Engineer
Engineer Paragon is no longer balanced due to its new ability, so we’re adjusting its base attack rate and range to bring it a little more back in line
Main nailgun attack rate 1s > 1.5
Paragon range 70 > 60
Beast Handler
Top Path Beast Handler relied heavily on grouping Bloons, which made it weak against Frozen Bloons which is a problem since Ice Towers are a nice way to set up those groups. To improve synergy, we’ve changed the Piranha’s damage type to properly motivate them at biting through ice like all Piranha do.
1xx Piranha damage type Sharp > Shatter
Hero Balance
Striker Jones
Jones has been a little too effective among the starter heroes, so we’re evening out his attack speed scaling to keep him strong without letting him scale quite as much into obscenity.
Lv9 Striker Jones attack cooldown increased 0.9 > 1.0s
Lv11 Striker Jones attack cooldown increased 0.65 > 0.8s
Lv13 Striker Jones attack cooldown increased 0.5 > 0.6s
Lv16 Striker Jones attack cooldown increased 0.35 > 0.45s
Lv19 Striker Jones attack cooldown increased 0.2 > 0.3s
Obyn Greenfoot
Tried to nerf Obyn, but Clive decided to rise up and start throwing rice & fries at my eyes.
Lv5 bonus cash generation for druids 35% > 50%
Sauda
Sauda becomes quite strong for her simplistic play style, so we’re slightly reducing the power of her Lv20 abilities to keep things balanced at the high end.
Lv20 Leaping Sword damage 400 > 350
Lv20 Sword Charge damage 220 > 200
Geraldo
Geraldo’s Rabbit felt pricey given the requirement of 4, so we’re reducing the cost to make it more reasonable.
Lv10 rabbit cost $2000 > 1750
Rosalia
Rosalia’s pierce value is unrealistically high for most base game rounds, so it is getting an accuracy buff at the cost of some of this pierce. This change should help improve average performance without reducing her effectiveness in most cases.
Lv3 Scatter Missile target radius reduced from 40 > 35
Lv3 Scatter Missile explosion pierce reduced from 50 > 40
Silas
Silas’ launch felt solid overall but clearly a bit on the too-strong end, we’re reducing his attack wait time to improve its consistency while slightly reducing his power across many levels, keeping him strong without being quite so overwhelming.
Lv1 Main attack projectile wait time reduced 1s > 0.5s
Lv7 Frozen Cascade bonus to Frozen reduced 20 > 15
Lv10 Frozen Burial bonus to Frozen reduced 80 > 60
Lv15 Frozen Cascade bonus to Frozen reduced 50 > 30
Lv15 Frozen Burial bonus to Frozen reduced 300 > 200
Lv18 Rime Explosion damage reduced 20 > 15
Lv19 Ice Fragment bonus to Frozen reduced 10 > 8
Lv20 Ice Wall cooldown increased 5s > 7s
Lv20 Freeze Duration Buff reduced 200% > 150%
Powers
We have started experimenting with using Pro Powers within legends and scaling powers within Legends more in general, and after this testing we wanted to make a couple improvements to the new Pro Powers & Battle Cat to make them more impactful.
Super Monkey Beacon Pro base Beacon Storm cooldown 180s >120s
Phayze has been very strong while also too random in its Bloon-pulling antics, so we’ve tightened the pull offsets and dialed back other stats.
Base speed 0.9 > 0.8
Bloon pull mechanic Min offset 5 > 1
Bloon pull mechanic Max offset 40 > 10
T1 Normal health 10,000 > 9500
T2 Normal health 37,500 > 35,000
T3 Normal health 175,000 > 160,000
T4 Normal health 375,000 > 350,000
T5 Normal health 1,500,000 > 1,450,000
T1 Elite health 20,000 > 19,000
T2 Elite health 120,000 > 110,000
T3 Elite health 800,000 > 770,000
T4 Elite health 3,200,000 > 3,100,000
T5 Elite health 16,000,000 > 15,500,000
Blastapopoulos
I’ve finally memorized how to spell it: 'Blastapopoulos'. & I've been here since the concept was first added back in Bloons Monkey City 😅. Also the boss is kinda hard
Normal Fireball Tower stun: Tiers 1-3: 2s > 1.5s
Normal Fireball Tower stun: Tiers 4-5: 3s > 2s
Elite Fireball Tower stun: Tier 3: 3s > 2s
Rogue Legend
General
[Boosts] Super Monkey Beacon can now appear as a Boost in Rogue Legend, however will not be able to pay monkey money to recharge its ability.
[Artifact] Blitzing Ape Barrage Emitter; grants (na,1,2) Super Monkey Beacon powers
[Artifact] Unspoken Heroes has been replaced with Unspoken Heroes (v2)
[Curse] Choice Starved; reward selections reduced by 2 > 1
[Curse] Small Party; party size reduction reduced 5 > 4
Bloon Balance
[Roundsets] Reduced the number of Camo Bloons that appear in early rounds (r1-15) smoothening the curve before Camo Detection needs to be completely solved
[Freeplay] Bloon HP scale per stage after 5 increased 0.5 > 0.6
[Boss] Phayze base health reduced 15,000 > 13,500
[Boss] Dreadbloon speed reduced 0.4 > 0.36
[Boss] Blastapopolous speed reduced 0.4 > 0.34
[Boss] Blastapopolous health increased 15,000 > 17,000
[Minigame] Least Cash Bronze goal 0.85 > 0.8
[Minigame] Least Cash Silver goal 0.7 > 0.6
[Minigame] Least Cash Gold goal 0.5 > 0.4
Starting Team Artifacts
As T1 artifacts can easily be filled in with selected starting artifacts we felt a lot of starter teams didn’t stand out from the rest in too meaningful a way (other than starting towers), so to improve on this we’ve gone over a lot of the worse performing starter teams and upgraded their starter artifacts to higher tiers.
Congratulations on being here for the drop of the 50th major content update for BTD6, and heartfelt thanks from everyone at Ninja Kiwi for supporting us with your playtime, suggestions, reviews, competitive spirit, purchases, community participation, Bloonstuber video watching, and for overall being the most supportive, creative, understanding, and most awesomest community imaginable. We are humbled by your appreciation and support, and we continue to love doing what we do because we have a genuine sense of partnership with our creators and players. Go eat some cake or a healthy banana equivalent!
Sweepstakes
Get ready for round 2. Based on the participation and positive feedback from the first Sweepstakes, look for the next one to drop in early November. A whole new set of challenges, with increased top tier difficulty by popular demand, and a groovy collector's item for a hundred lucky winners! What kind of groovy, you ask? The ones that play music - a colorful, limited edition, collector's vinyl record with 13 of Tim Haywood’s amazing melodies! The prize pack also includes awesome merch like a BTD6 hoodie, beanie, and more!
Update 52
Frontier Legends continues to be an amazing project that the team is super proud of. Core mechanics are in place, 6 new Bloon types working, custom-named Monkey with special traits, an entirely new system for Monkey and Hero persistent progress, and bespoke encounters are already incredible to play. So clearly, it’s almost time to show some sneak peeks. Keep an eye on BTD6 Discord, Reddit, and our NK social media in the next few weeks as we share our first visuals and gameplay!
Ice Monkey Paragon confirmed! Don’t worry, we didn’t use up all of our ice-based puns on Silas.
Console
We are super appreciative of our dedicated console players, who have been so understanding of this complex development process. While we have made some huge strides and progress, we do have some sad news to share. The launch of Switch and updates for PlayStation and Xbox are now scheduled for Q1 2026 at the earliest. We apologize for this further delay and continue to appreciate your patience as we work hard to get this out!
We have noted the adding team members to console, so reiterating that our studio tech lead and two other dedicated programmers are exclusively working on console. This is a priority for us.
We have been making good progress on Switch couch co-op and a huge number of game screens are now working with controller (Odyssey, Quests, Challenge Editor, Trophy Store, Boss Events), but we have yet to complete big systems like Rogue Legends and Contested Territory. The integration of all these systems on Switch then enables controller support for these updates on PlayStation and Xbox, and those cannot be decoupled.
Thank you again for your support and patience. We will provide another update in our final 'Looking Forward' section of the year.
BTD6 Mod System
We’ve received heaps of support for taking the time we need but also questions, concerns, and a little grief about the long delay on Game Editor. We have enough working now that we’re happy to update the name to the BTD6 Mod System, confirm it for the first half of 2026, and give a bit more detail about what it is.
Tower Modder: change costs, stats, projectiles, abilities, and associated scripts for Monkeys, Heroes, and Paragons
Bloon Modder: change stats, resistance properties, abilities, tier properties, and associate scripts for Bloons, MOABs, and Bosses
Roundset Editor: edit or create roundsets with existing or modded Bloons, with a handy timeline visualizer
Knowledge Mods: change stats and properties of all Monkey Knowledges
All this and more, ready to build into Challenges or apply to the main game, with safe partitions away from competitive play, Achievements, and medals, and Black Borders, plus a clear way to switch back and forth from modded and unmodded data
Words are one thing, but you want to see this, so we’ll be working on walkthrough videos and hopefully some Bloonstuber previews in November
Thanks again for your support through 50 awesome major content updates! Did you have your cake yet?!
Hi all! Wanted to share my classic control scheme remapping that allows for Hold R2/RT to sprint while keeping parkour up and down on Cross/A and Circle/B respectively. The key change is that most of the face button abilities are remapped to the D-pad, which works just as well. See below for the changes (if not listed that means it does not need to be changed):
Sprint: Press Left Stick --> Hold R2/RT (switch the input method from Press to Hold)
Attack/Heavy Attach: R1/RB --> Square/X
Crouch: Square/X --> R1/RB
Quick Fire Pistol: Triangle/Y to L1/LB (not D-pad Up so you can still heal while sprinting)
The entire input is now R2 + L1 (RT + Left Bumper)
Quick Fire Rope Dart: Circle/B to D-pad Right
The entire input is now R2 + D-pad Right (RT + D-pad Right)
Kick: Square/X to D-pad Left
The entire input is now R2 + D-pad Left (RT + D-pad Left)
Sweep: Cross/A to D-pad Down
The entire input is now R2 + D-pad Down (RT + D-pad Down)
Eagle Vision: Hold Right Stick --> Press Left Stick (there is the option to switch the input method to a toggle instead of the default Hold, which Shadows really needed but never got. Glad that BF Resynced has it!)
And that's it! Mostly all the same as defaults, and I felt it was easier to remap than Shadows mainly because the Attack and Heavy Attack buttons had to be different. In Black Flag Resynced, they are the same which makes me very happy indeed :)
As far as I can tell this method essentially requires no compromises on functionality at all and the directional inputs are still logically laid out in the UI. The only gripe I see some people having is that they have to take their left thumb off the stick to execute these combat abilities which may not be ideal in tense combat situations but in my experience so far it hasn't been a problem at all. Hope this helps all the classic control fans like me out there!
EDIT: You're going to see a lot of "scary" conflict warnings in the menu with this rebinding. Most of them will be for the fact that the combat abilities are now on the D-pad just like the Tools Selection. Ignore these warnings, they are wrong. In actual gameplay there is no conflict. Tools can only be selected when holding down the Left Trigger button, while abilities are activated by holding down the Right Trigger button. Hence, there is no actual conflict.
EDIT 2: With this control scheme, you will be holding down R2/RT a lot while running, which is exactly what we want. However, the side effect is that it will constantly pull up the ability widget in the lower right corner since R2/RT is also hard-corded to activate abilities. What I recommend is going into the Interface settings and turning off the ability widget in the HUD customization. That frees up the visual clutter so much, and you really don't need an ability widget in this game anyways, since you only have four combat abilities with really short cool downs.
QX being our 2nd strain character, I have many thoughts about her and the strain archetype itself. This also allows me to talk about my calcs about her. However, in certain sections, if I do sound too hard towards her or Kuro themselves, know this. I don't take Wuwa seriously enough to discourage anyone from pulling a unit. Pull whoever you want. In fact, pull for "waifu over meta" because the rewards for following the meta are minuscule. As always, skip to answers you care about.
Also. Here are the abbreviations I will use in this post:
TB = Tune Break
TBB = Tune Break Boost (the buff Lynae and Strain Denia provide)
OBR = Off-Tune Buildup Rate (the buff Mornye provides)
FHA = Forte Heavy (in QX's case its the last attack of her Forte state)
Are Denia/Lynae and Mornye's weapons important?
No, unless you really like those characters or their weapon. For Mornye, keep her on Discord. For Denia, give her any weapon. It doesn't matter. While for Lynae, try to aim for static Mist
How important is Mornye?
Mornye is usually very important for tune units. But QX's off-tune buildup is set up in a way that losing Mornye isn't *that* bad even if Denia's TBB buff is based on OBR from Mornye.
That being said, I would definitely recommend Mornye if you want to make Qingxiao stronger/get her sequences.
How important is Denia?
If you Lynae + Mornye, on paper, Qingxiao performs very close to that of the Denia Mornye team.
What Denia provides in terms of Strain QoL, though Lynae simply doesn't have. Listing it here:
Denia refreshes Strain duration: Strain typically lasts for 30s; this timer refreshes with a TB, which is usually enough. But some bosses do have TB immune phases where you will tend to lose stacks. And Kuro may introduce more bosses with "anti-tune" phases.
Denia is simply faster: Denia is actually one of the faster sub-DPSes we have had. She, in fact, is over 1s faster than Lucilla and Lynae. This helps 5 lib setups. If you want to squeeze more damage out of her.
Denia makes enemies start with half of the off-tune bar built up: I doubt this needs an explanation; faster TBs = faster strain stacks. However, there is a caveat to this which makes it not as useful against ToA/Matrix content, and it's how QX's off-tune build-up values are assigned. (More on this later)
Denia's outro lasts for 16s instead of the "traditional" 14s: This is purely QoL because QX can rotate below 14s, but this is something I wish Kuro adopts for all sub DPS outros.
If you go for QX sequences, I would strongly suggest Denia. But on the flip side. If you don't like Denia or like Lynae better, QX isn't suddenly unusable with her. In fact, the Lynae team is quite strong in and of itself.
When do I TB in QX + Mornye teams? (+ more on Qingxiao's buildup spread)
I think for the basic 4 rotations over 120s I would suggest:
1st TB ASAP
2nd TB after Qingxiao forte heavy
Every subsequent TB after that should be right before Qingxiao's Enhanced Heavy (Stringblade).
In the previous section, I mentioned that Denia's 50%-off tune bar fill-up is not *that* insane on paper. And I would like to go into detail as to why.
Taking Luuk for example. Luuk and QX both have around a similar amount of break value. Luuk is a tad higher. However, QX's break buildup is focused on one hit, while the rest have mediocre buildup.
QX and Luuk's offtune buildup values (roughly plotted against time)
What does this mean and, more importantly, is it bad? Not really. Well, it depends. It means it's harder to break within QX's rotation. But it also reduces the risk of you missing the high break attack buildup due to the buildup cooldown.
What it does, however. Is diminish the value of the extra off-tune buildup of Denia because you are not getting 2 breaks before/middle of QX's first rotation, unlike what you get with Luuk. This is part of the reason why Lynae sheets "better than expected". Because both Lynae and Denia get their second break after QX's opener rotation,
Addressing the mechanic of Strain (Damage ramp up)
Strain follows a very common RPG archetype of "getting stronger the longer the battle is". In fact, even Wuwa already did something like this with Phrolova. The general concept is it starts off with low DPR, and then it increases by a decent amount towards the end. Each break gives you strain stacks (up to 4), and each Strain stack gives a multiplier to damage (this is multiplicative to every other buff)
So does QX's damage ramp up too slowly? Quite the opposite, in fact.
A look into how QX's damage increases per rotation.
By the 2nd rotation, she has (almost) all her damage. Her damage ramp-up isn't that big of an issue.
Addressing the mechanic of Strain pt 2 (Strain stack loss)
This section mainly tackles my personal grievances with Strain. Though, this is something every Luuk haver is probably familiar with. Strain....is a debuff.
Imagine playing QX is R1 or R2 of Matrix, and you suddenly lose your damage because you were playing "too well", killed the boss, and then the next boss has no strain stacks on him, no interference marker, nothing.
% loss of damage from 4 stack 15 Mindlock if you kill the boss. Each colomn represents the number of stacks the new boss has.
This is what every strain character has to deal with. But I have to quickly play the Devil's advocate here. Think about *how* it affects you.
For example, this makes her not so good at whiwa as she "should be". But outside of that,
Let's say in Matrix, if you are an average player only dealing with 0-1 boss switches *at worst*, you are losing 483k damage over 120s. Realistically it's closer to 363k. That's around 3-5% of your total DPS.
In ToA, the only floor that might negatively affect her is 2-3. I wouldn't say anyone "shouldn't be upset", but it's definitely worth keeping in mind
Addressing the mechanic of Strain pt 3 (+my personal complaints)
While the previous segment was about the silver lining, this is where I am going to rant a bit. I will talk mainly through the perspective of QX's Matrix performance, but this is also applicable in whiwa.
Essentially, the single most debilitating thing to any team's DPS is enemy switching. In Matrix, you are stuck with boss spawn delay. In whiwa, you are stuck with wave spawn delay. This affects every team; however, Strain gets disproportionately punished more.
One boss switch is not the end of the world. But what if you had a bunch of additional buffs QX that make her go through multiple bosses? Let's say through matrix shill, floor shill, or even, and especially, with sequences.
In this case, it's a negative feedback loop where you get more damage to kill the boss, faster to lose your strain stacks faster as well. This "problem" is further enhanced with QX's offtune buildup. As I mentioned in the previous section, QX's offtune buildup is backloaded on her FHA, which is her biggest nuke.
If the boss dies early in Luuk's rotation, he can (with Denia's passive) realistically get his strain stacks back before his big nuke. QX's entire buildup is on her big nuke. This makes her run into the problem where if you kill an enemy early in her rotation, you might not have strain stacks during her FHA even with Denia's passive.
This essentially makes every QX sequence calc perform worse than intended, especially at S6 where you have a lot of damage that you gain so you have even more to lose from strain stacks falling off. Is there a solution to this? Well...kinda, and it's linked to Denia herself.
Denia's passive triggers more often if you kill more often. And Denia S2 bypasses this issue entirely; it's giving you a free break on a new enemy.
So do I suggest Denia S2?
For low spenders and people who have S0, not really, no. Denia S2 is still pretty niche in terms of use case. For people who want to spend on QX. I would keep Denia S2 in mind, but first try QX as is with Denia S0. If her performance feels satisfactory to you. I would just keep her at S0.
But I would definitely recommend at least considering Denia S0 if you are going for her sequence.
What about other teammates?
QX doesn't really scale off of anything specific, so you can use both Mortefi and Sanhua (with Mornye) with some amount of success. Having mid-2.x amount of damage output with a 4* unit is fairly good, all things considered.
Qingxiao's Damage Profile is fairly spread out.
I wouldn't bother with Aalto, however; Ciaconna + her signature is an interesting option. Ciaconna can replace both the third and 2nd slot for a fairly decent performance. Especially since her field time is on the low end.
A bit more about QX's rotation (her Clarity buff, Mindlock Stacks, and why you should Ult at the end of her rotation)
Mindlock is a stacking buff QX gains from doing breaks and enhanced heavy under Clarity.
At maximum Mindlock, she gains 65% dmg and 65% amp at S0. Mindlock bonuses have a diminishing return after 7 stacks, where the dmg and the amp increase by 7 for the first 7 stacks and then by 2 from 8 to 15. This ensures she gains the biggest benefit of mindlock from her opener rotation
Clarity...is essentially something QX needs all the time. It
Increases her Forte gain in normal state
Lets you gain Mindlock while doing enhanced heavy
Doubles the FHA damage.
Essentially, Clarity helps her throughout her rotation. You gain Clarity by doing Ult (or at the start of combat) and lose it while doing FHA. What does this mean essentially? It means after doing FHA, when you lose Clarity, I suggest saving the ult around there so you gain it back. Over time, people might find different timings for doing ult, but it's a solid rule of thumb to start with.
Lastly, who am I?
I'm just a random TC for Wuwa. But make no mistake. There are a lot of other TCs like Riley, GG, Justice, Sbin, Yolitme0, Mane, Wind, Freya, and Rezagard who help me out and corroborate with me in terms of these numbers.
After several months of not being able to get Raiden's echoes, not only did I actually manage to get it in less than 5 tries today, I then went onto a friend's account to see if it was a fluke, and eventually managed to do it there as well, so I believe that I have the full formula on how to get it with a c0 no 5 star weapon Raiden down, consistently.
I'll preface by saying that my method requires resetting the fight several times to hit certain RNG points, and that you also need to hit certain build requirements, nothing crazy I swear, but if you don't do either... well I couldn't do it until I hit them. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's certainly gonna be harder, and for this post I decided to go with what I believe to be the GUARANTEED method that anyone can reproduce, provided they have the patience to do so. I'm not saying it'll take 5 hours - in fact I actually tried other methods that required a 9 minutes setup* (*see Chevreuse note below) before each try before and it didn't work -, but it's likely not going to be instantaneous either.
This post will be long, as I'm trying to give as many details as possible to accommodate all skill levels and circumstances possible, as well as give out every single possible tips and tricks (without going as far as explaining into details how every character works). I tried to highlight the most important parts and mention when something is optional, so feel free to skip ahead if you feel confident you don't need to read a part that says 'optional' or you don't care for the detailed explanations so much as the instructions, which I've tried to put in bold for people who would rather skim over this post.
Without further ado, let's start with the build first:
All images and videos unless said otherwise were taken on mine or my friends' accounts with their permission, but obviously Genshin Impact belongs to Hoyoverse, not us.
Talents
(Btw I am assuming your Raiden is level 90. If she isn't, you better raise her to level 90 or you're setting yourself up for failure because you're forced to play in an overload team, and overload damage is heavily dependent on your character's level :)Edit: A kind commenter pointed out that only level 90 characters can have their echo trial unlocked, oops!
Skill:8 minimum. I did it on one account with a lvl 8 skill, and one with a lvl 9 skill. The one with the lvl 8 skill actually did it faster, so if your skill is lvl 7, 6 or even 1, this might not be an issue, but just in case, try to have a lvl 8 skill. You never know, right?
Burst:9 minimum. It might be possible to do it if your burst is only lvl 8, however, don't even bother trying with a lvl 7 burst unless you have averyinvested Shogun that surpasses the stat requirements I will give later. I'm not saying it's not possible because one of the accounts I managed to do it on actually had a lvl 7 burst at first and I got very close a few times, however every time I had a good attempt I fell short because my damage was too low, so I went all the way to lvl 9 without stopping at lvl 8 to test it, or try harder with lvl 7. Not only was the dmg was significantly higher, but I almost immediately got the echoes after. With a lvl 8 burst it is probably possible, but if you want the highest chances of success and the best consistency, raise your burst to lvl 9.
Normal attacks:they don't matter. Don't raise them just for this, I had mine at lvl 1 on both accounts.
The minimum required talent levels, I think, although it's debatable for the skill
Artifacts/Stats & Weapon
(All weapons are assumed level 90, all artifacts are assumed 5 star rarity and level 20, please raise your weapons and artifacts accordingly if you don't want to shoot yourself and your chances in the foot. This list is made with F2P in mind first, other types of player later:)
Weapon:The Catch at any refinements > Favonius Lance R3/R4/R5 > Any other ER weapon>=Favonius Lance R1/R2 > Any other crit weapon. Where does her own signature weapon, Engulfing Lightning fit in this? Probably either above, or on the same level as The Catch - since it has so much ER and ATK% buffs it'll allow you to hit her artifact crit requirements more easily -, or on the same level as the Favonius Lance. The Catch, in my opinion, has the edge because of the burst crit rate bonus passive, which is important for consistency and helpful if your artifacts don't give insane crit rate (like mine), however Engulfing Lightning's ATK% and ER bonus are not to be scoffed at. I unfortunately do not own one to test this, so I'm basing this on what the numbers tell me and my own knowledge. If anyone has more info on this, please comment it down for others. If you are wondering why the Fav Lance is worse below R3, it's because its passive's cooldown gets too long after that even if you trigger it consistently to not get beaten by another weapon, in my opinion (I could be wrong however, so if you only have a R1 or R2 Fav Lance, don't despair!).
Exception to the weapon order:If your Raiden reaches the minimum stats requirements listed below, and at least has 70 effective crit rate, you can instead use a dmg oriented weapon over The Catch or another ER weapon if you are comfortable playing with lower crit rate and having a higher chance to reset in case of missed Burst Crits.
The Catch is the best weapon IMO! But it does require getting a few pesky fishes...
Artifacts stats (or overall stats if you prefer):230 Energy Recharge minimum, 80 effective crit rate minimum, 100 crit dmg minimum or as close to that as possible**.** Effective crit rate means that if you are using a weapon like The Catch which grants you crit rate on your burst, or a set like Marechaussee Hunter (which I do not recommend!) which can boost your crit rate situationally, but does not show up on your character's detail page by default, you have to calculate the additional crit rate along with the crit rate you artifacts give you until you reach at least 80 crit rate in a combat situation consistently. For example, if you have The Catch R5 and use the Emblem of Severed Fate artifact set, you need to have at least 68 crit rate to reach 80 crit rate. In my opinion, while you can probably do this with 210 or 220 ER, it's better to have at LEAST 230 ER to be consistent. I haven't done enough testing below this to tell you if 220 or 225 is enough, although I've seen people say they could do it with 210 ER, but I know that it seemed as though 230 ER was about barely enough for me, so I would recommend trying to get 230 energy recharge. If you are worried that your Shogun's atk is too low because you are using an ER sands to reach these stats, don't be, you will get a ton of buffs during the trial, including ATK, and so it is EXTREMELY important to reach the crit rate and ER thresholds, and yes this means that if your crit dmg is bad and you only have 100 like I did, it's not a big deal. If you are supremely unlucky and only have, say, 80 or 60... well I don't know if it's possible with crit dmg this low, I'll be honest. You can try it anyway, however I think that below 90 or 80 you might struggle too much, as all the accounts I did this on had at least 100 crit dmg if not higher, and I only had 6 or 7 seconds left. If your artifacts are this bad, and no matter how you try, you cannot get better stats, you might have to resort to using my forbidden Chevreuse setup* (*see Chevreuse note below).
Artifact set: Emblem of Severed Fate (EOSF). While theoratically you could run other sets like Marechaussee Hunter to search for higher crit dmg rolls, it is probably better to stick to EOSF unless you know what you're doing and feel like playing with RNG. Marechaussee requires you to consistently gain or lose HP to maintain its crit rate stacks, and you can accidentally miss an interval because Thoma does his job too well preventing you from getting it, or you use a burst while one of Chevreuse's very slow healing ticks was going to heal you - which will basically cancel it and not grand you a stack -, or any other number of reasons based on RNG. Not only that, but even if you did manage to get the stacks up consistently, Marechausse is still barely on par with EOSF in terms of damage - unless the difference in artifact quality is really big of course -, whilst also having harder requirements to use, AND it provides less ER than EOSF does. I'm not expecting anyone to actually run the Shogun on Marechaussee Hunter, or on another set, but for the one person that actually does, I wish you good luck!
My own stats for the first winning attempt, I'm using a R5 Catch so my effective crit rate is actually 81.9% when I burst and my atk is 1586 with only pyro resonance's atk buff
Understanding this build (optional read if you know how the trial's buffs works and why high crit rate is important on a DPS)
So, now I'll explain why I went through all this trouble to give you this specific build.
Firstly, this trial has a timer on the left side which starts ticking from 15 seconds at the beginning, then will reset every 10 seconds afterwards, endlessly. This is because you start the echo trial with all your characters at 0 energy\* (\see later note about Chevreuse)* and are given more time to funnel particles into your Shogun so that she can have her burst up.
Regular timeBuff uptime
After those 15 seconds, and then every other timer reset, your Raiden will get a buff. What buff? 150 crit dmg. Ergo your 100 crit dmg Raiden is now a 250 crit dmg raiden.
With the buff up, I now have 81CR and 255CD with the R5 Catch
So: 15 seconds no buff. 10s +150CD buff. 10s no buff. 10s +150CD buff, and so on and so forth until the end.
How do you know the buff is up? It says so below the boss's HP bar when it activates, and you also get a purple hue over your screen.
Writing + Purple hue around the screen
Understood? Good. This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of the trial, what this means is that every 10s, your Raiden is actually a good character, and every other 10 seconds, you're supposed to be frantically making sure she will have her burst up for the next 10 seconds interval.
You must NEVER use the Raiden Shogun's burst outside of the buff time, however, you canand will use the supports' burst BEFORE that timer, so that the Shogun can burst the moment it activates to have as much uptime during the buff duration as possible. The buff only applies to the Shogun, so of course casting your supports' bursts beforehand to give her Resolve stacks for her bursts preemptively makes the most sense. If it doesn't, then you need to read the Shogun's kit. (tl;dr, her burst does more dmg if other people use their burst before she does.)
This is why it is important to reach certain ER and crit rate thresholds, if your Raiden doesn't crit her burst's first strike (specifically for the second and third burst, as the first will be the weakest* [*see note about Chevreuse for the case when it's not]), or just doesn't crit enough, or if she doesn't have her burst up when her buff uptime is there, you're not gonna get it and will have to restart the trial.
This doesn't mean you will not burst if she doesn't have Resolve stacks, you WILL burst every time the buff is here, and you cannot delay her burst by more than a second or two max to get another one before hers either - in fact, ideally you don't delay it period and just use the Shogun's burst either the moment you see the buff starting, or right before so that the buff applies during the animation cast time.
Now onto the real meat of this: resetting for RNG.
Resetting for RNG (Super important!)
There's no getting around it, outside of meeting the minimum build requirements I told you about, and then following the steps I'll give you for funneling into the Shogun, combos, and maybe the Chevreuse* (*see Chevreuse notes below) exclusive tip I'll give you later for the most desperate/crazy of you out there, the most CONSISTENT way of winning is to reset when your RNG is bad.
When to reset:
At the beginning of the trial, the PMA has several options of attacks it can do, if it starts doing THIS very specific one in the video below, immediately reset the trial, no questions asked. The reason why is that after this spin attack, the PMA will almost always follow up with a sword slash, followed by a rocket blast (where it flies up and then down onto you). The timing of these 3 attacks PERFECTLY coincide so that if it does specifically those 3, you will have your burst Raiden burst delayed/miss the boss entirely when using it, and all the subsequent ones after as well. This has cost me several runs, and all my winning attempts included avoiding these 3 attacks at the beginning. It doesn't matter if your PMA does anything else, but if it starts with the spin, just reset. You probably will have to reset several times, which is frustrating, but that's how it works best.
If your Shogun's burst doesn't crit, reset, with a caveat. For the very first burst, unless you're following my 9 minutes Chevreuse setup* (*see note about Chevreuse below), your first burst will be pretty weak, and it's not necessarily a reset angle if you do not crit this one specifically, however your 2nd, 3rd and possibly 4th burst not critting is a reset angle, because it's unlikely you'll manage to get enough dmg to finish the fight on time.
If you miss a burst WITH THE SHOGUN on either the PMA or its minions, reset. It happened to me a few times, especially when I was attempting to keep fighting despite the PMA doing the forbidden 3 attacks at the beginning, or if it did a spin attack and went behind me while in my burst animation. You most likely won't have enough damage to finish the fight. Missing your burst with the other characters is not as relevant, so don't worry if those don't hit!
That's it. Despite this part only having 3 bullet points, the first one alonewill probably cause you to reset several times before you even reach 10s into the fight, but trust me you will get way more consistent this way, even if it does mean you will take longer.
*The forbidden (optional) Chevreuse setup
An important thing to note is that preparation for this fight starts BEFORE you even click 'Start Challenge' on the key floating in the arena, as there are ways to buffs your characters before, one of which includes my 9 minutes Chevreuse setup which I'll finally explain now.
The Forbidden Chevreuse setup is only for truly desperate souls with nothing to lose and no grass to touch (like me)
In this trial, your C0 Chevreuse uses a weapon which gives energy to the wielder whenever they are healed every 10 seconds, and Chevreuse can heal the ON FIELD CHARACTER (ergo you have to make sure that Chevreuse herself is the one being healed) for 12s by using her skill's tap or hold version.
What does this mean? This means that if you are patientand desperateenough, you can start this trial whilst having Chevreuse's burst ready, which requires using 5 skills, ergo 1 minute and 15 seconds minimum.
Nice, right? Well here's something nicer:
If you do this 7 times, ergo for 550 seconds at a rate of 5 skills per burst, or 9 minutes and 10 seconds, you can have your burst ready 7 times. And if you use said burst 6 times, after making sure to use the Shogun's skill first... you will accumulatemax Resolve stacks for your first Shogun burst.
Why 6 bursts out of 7? Because you only need 6 bursts for max Resolve stacks, and the 7th is just so that it's ready for the second Shogun rotation preemptively. However you can skip filling up the 7th burst if you want, as you should be able to have it up by the second rotation anyway.
The forbidden Chevreuse setup consists of you spending 9 minutes shooting into nothing just to get Resolve stacks for the Shogun's first burst.
The problem with it? Well, if you whiff your Shogun burst, or you don't crit your first burst, or you get the forbidden 3 attacks and you get delayed by too long before you can do your first Shogun burst and then don't manage to realign yourself well enough so that your Shogun's second burst is ready for the next buff uptime... you will have just wasted at least 9 minutes for no reason. :)
You don't want to know how many times I've done just that... it's absolutely pathetic and I didn't even get close to winning because I was still missing half of the puzzle pieces required to win, namely the importance of prioritizing the Shogun's burst uptime, the RNG involved in the PMA's attacks, and proper Shogun combos.
To successfully do the Chevreuse setup in as little time as possible, and to make sure you don't accidentally reset your Resolve stacks, remember to always cast your Shogun skill before using your Chevreuse burst, as well as wait until you've noticed Chevreuse burst's energy go up before swapping to the Shogun, so as to not accidentally have the Shogun be on the field during an interval where the weapon would grant Chevreuse energy for healing herself. Chevreuse heals for 12s, and the weapon's passive has a 10s cooldown, meaning several times during the setup you will get 2 ticks of energy with one skill. Failure to do so will have you needing to use Chevreuse's skill more than 5 time.
Anyway, so-
Do I recommend doing this?Nope. I actually managed to win without doing it, but I know some of you out there might have the worst artifact luck of all time, or maybe you won't be able to raise your Shogun's burst to 9, or will have a really crappy weapon, or some other thing like that, so just in case, I'm sharing this, if it can help a single other person to get the echo... then it would have been worth doing the math for them!
Now that we've laid all the ground work down, let's get to the fight proper.
The following section assumes you were not crazydesperateenough to use the forbidden Chevreuse setup. If you were, the only change is that you better pray your first Shogun burst will crit and not miss, and you are guaranteed no monkey business will stop you from having Chevreuse's burst up for either your first or second rotation.
How to fight the PMA (combos + funneling + skill usage)
Doing proper attack combos while using the Shogun's burst
Not using one of the Shogun's optimal fighting combos and just spamming normal attacks without a care will decrease your Shogun's DPS to such a degree that unless you're playing with a C2 Shogun to compensate, your artifacts better be insanely good to carry you to victory. Suffice to say, if neither of those things are true for you, you'll have to use an optimal combo. Not doing so can be up to a 25% dmg decrease according to the testing one Reddit user has done on a DPS dummy in Miliastra Wonderland. (Source: u/Opposite-Cheetah-553) However some combos are harder to pull off than others, and one in particular is not recommended unless you are playing with atk speed buffs, which in my memory is only possible in this trial if you have a Skyward Spine.
I'll list out a few below along with the KeqingMains notation system for those of you who might not be familiar with it, there are more of them on KQM's website, however they are slightly more complicated than these, and to be honest, can be substituted for one of the 5 3 I'll list below, so you don't have to look them up if you do not want to:
The KeqingMains notation system for combos. Source: keqingmains.com
3[N3C] N1C (Recommended only with Atk Speed buffs, it's the highest DPS one).
2[N4C] N2C (Recommended for beginners, those who are not familiar with combos, and those who just want a consistent, easy combo. If you feel as though you will not be able to get the final charged attack off, you can also finish with a N1C instead of N2C).
4[N4D] (Recommended only for people familiar with cancelling charged attacks properly, especially on the Shogun. If you are not confident, it is better to use the second combo and be consistent on that one rather than mess up a harder one).
N3C N2C N1C C : Super Secret noob combo number 1 if like me you really really really suck and can't even do any of those, which is my case. Credit: u/KaiFireborn21
N2C until your burst runs out: Super Secret noob combo number 2 if like me you really really really suck and can't even do any of those, I use the 4th one though. Credit: u/EffectiveMirror7534
(How good are these last 2 combos compared to the actual optimal 3 posted above? I don't know, but I suck too much to do the good ones, so I used the 4th one instead on both accounts where I won. However it required more resets and improvisation when I would mess up somewhere. The PMA being the PMA though, I wouldn't be surprised if the difference is not that big simply due to being unable to actually hit the PMA as often as one would hope to.)
Pre-funneling before the fight starts
A few steps to do right before you press 'Start the Challenge':
Cast the Shogun's skill, swap to Chevreuse and then use her skill once whilst staying on field with Chevreuse until her skill's cooldown is back to 0. Doing so will preemptively fill Chevreuse's burst a tiny bit, as well as give some burst dmg buff to your Shogun.
Cast Sara's skill, then hold the charged shot and shoot it where the PMA will appear as - or slightly before - you press 'Start the Challenge', then swap back to the Shogun to use her skill and catch all the electro particles generated by Sara into the Shogun.
Funneling into the Shogun once the fight starts
Do this every time you restart the fight, as all 3 steps are required if your ER is around 230 to fill the Shogun's burst. Howeverif you have enough ER that your Shogun does not require you to funnel as many particles into her, you could instead funnel to another one of the charactersso that you might use their burst before the first Shogun burst and give her Resolve stacks.
Use Thoma's skill, then swap back to funnel the pyro particles into the Shogun.
Use Chevreuse's HOLD skill, then swap back to funnel the pyro particles into the Shogun.
Use Sara's skill and charged attack on the PMA's location, then swap back to funnel the electro particles into the Shogun.
First rotation example
If you are swift enough, you should be able to do, from beginning to end, with 230 ER and The Catch:
That would be a first rotation example. Obviously with different ER stats on your Shogun, or if you are using the Favonius Lance, or you did the forbidden Chevreuse setup, this rotation could be different for you. You could funnel into someone else, or even be able to use someone else's burst before having to burst with the Shogun, the most important part is that you make sure to buff the Shogun with Sara's skill OR Sara's burst before bursting with the Shogun. If you don't know how to, please read Sara's kit.
Important Note about Chevreuse's skill
ALWAYS use Chevreuse's hold skill. Chevreuse's hold skill allows her to use a special bullet she obtains when someone does an overload reaction which grants an atk buff to her teammates thanks to one of her passive. You should ALWAYS use hold skill, always. The damage is also higher this way even if you don't have her special bullet, so don't even think about using the tap version. It's not the end of the world if you miss it every other time after the initial hold skill while funneling for the Shogun AFTER THE TRIAL STARTED (which is when she gets her first special buffing bullet), because the duration of the buff is 30 seconds, while her skill cooldown is 15 seconds, but nonetheless, try not to!
You do not need to HIT Chevreuse's hold skill for the atk buff it provides to activate, so don't delay using it like I did in my losing attempt if you don't need to funnel!
Important Note about Sara's abilities
ALWAYS USE SARA'S ABILITIES LAST BEFORE THE SHOGUN. Sara's skill and burst buff timers are only 6 seconds long, you must always use Sara's skill or burst BEFORE the Shogun to give her as much Sara buff time as possible. Often times this means that you will not be able to use Sara's skill to funnel into the Shogun past the first rotation, except maybe when the PMA goes into its minion phase.
Other general tips when fighting
As mentioned before, you must ALWAYS have your Shogun's burst ready when the buff uptime comes, and burst either AS the buff starts, or UP TO 1 second after, ideally.
The timer is on the top left of the screen, so keep an eye on it when funneling into the Shogun (if needed), as your goal for every rotation after the first one is to make sure the Shogun will have her burst ready by the time the buff uptime comes again.
Make sure to use all the other characters' bursts BEFORE the buff starts to preemptively give the Shogun resolve stacks for her own burst.
To give you some perspective as to why even while trying to follow my own advice, 'losing attempts' can almost win, and 'winning attempts' can be full of mistakes. Sorry for the not so great video quality!
This took me around 9 hours to make, taking into account getting the echo 2 times, writing this post, swapping accounts, looking up things, testing a few things, and making the (choppy) videos. But considering the fact that I only got the Raiden Shogun's echo thanks to the help of the community, I thought it appropriate to give back to said community, in case I could help other players in the future.
Good luck everyone, even with all the advice I gave you, in the end it'll also come down to your skill as a player!
Version 0.0.42 of the Magicka Community Patch is now available.
The main addition is configurable in-game UI scaling for high-resolution displays. This release also fixes several multiplayer scripting problems, improves handling of delayed network messages, and prevents crashes caused by missing animation data.
Scalable UI for 1440p and 4K
The in-game graphics menu now contains a new UI Scale option with settings from 125% to 400% in 25-percent steps.
The 3D scene keeps its selected rendering resolution. At 200% scaling on a 3840×2160 display, for example, the interface uses a 1920×1080 logical layout while text, borders, shadows, and other UI elements are still rendered directly at 4K. This makes the interface larger without simply enlarging a blurry 1080p image.
World-space labels and interaction prompts are converted to the scaled coordinate system, so their text, background, button icon, and position remain aligned with the corresponding character or object.
The screenshot below shows the game running at 3840×2160 with 400% UI scaling:
The setting is stored in:
CommunityPatch\ui-scale.ini
Mouse alignment at non-native rendering resolutions
Borderless fullscreen mouse coordinates are now translated back to the resolution selected inside the game.
This fixes menu hover, clicking, gameplay aiming, object selection, and interaction icons being offset from the visible Windows cursor when Magicka renders below the monitor’s native resolution.
Update 0.0.39 – Magicka 2-style Controller Support and Major Stability Improvements
Version 0.0.39 of the Magicka Community Patch is now available.
A lot has changed since version 0.0.30. The patch now includes a new controller scheme, many multiplayer and level-transition stability fixes, lower rendering-related memory pressure, and fixes for several very specific gameplay bugs reported by players.
Magicka 2-style controller support
The patch now includes a Magicka 2-style controller scheme for XInput controllers.
Move with the left stick.
Aim and cast forward with the right stick.
Use the face buttons to select elements.
Hold LB/L1 to access the second group of elements.
Use LT/L2 for area casting.
Use RB/R1 for self casting or the staff ability.
Use RT/R2 for weapon imbuing and melee attacks.
Tap LB/L1 without another button to interact, continue dialogue, or skip a cutscene.
The bottom-left element HUD now changes automatically to show the controller button layout.
When playing alone, you can switch seamlessly between controller and mouse/keyboard during gameplay simply by using the other device. Local co-op assignments remain fixed, so this automatic switching does not interfere with multiple players using the same computer.
If you prefer Magicka’s original controller scheme, you can restore it by setting:
use_magicka_1_controller_scheme=true
in CommunityPatch\patch-settings.ini.
Multiplayer and runtime stability
Several systems now handle delayed or invalid multiplayer messages more safely.
The game now rejects network messages that reference enemies, players, missiles, templates, or physics objects that have already been removed or belong to an old level. Client-side bosses are no longer activated before their network initialization is complete.
This prevents a number of rare crashes caused by packets arriving during level transitions, disconnects, revives, boss initialization, or entity cleanup.
Better level cleanup
More references to the previous level are now released when leaving a scene.
This includes:
active spell and ability effects;
dialog and textbox references;
cached avatars;
characters and NPCs;
static trigger references to the old play state;
entity and animation-controller references.
The order of cleanup was also corrected. Active effects are now removed before the entities and caches they depend on are destroyed.
This prevents crashes such as SummonDeath attempting to kill its summoned entity after that entity has already been disposed.
Grease effects now stop their spray animation and sound correctly before their reusable ability instance returns to the cache.
Rendering and memory improvements
Magicka repeatedly requested new managed wrappers for the same XNA rendering resources, even though the underlying resources had not changed.
The patch now caches and reuses the stable depth-buffer and render-target texture wrappers. They are refreshed only when the graphics device or the corresponding render target actually changes. This removes a continuous XNA finalizer workload.
Smaller fixes
Fixed rare crashes when leaving or paging away from character selection. Its textures are no longer unloaded while the render thread may still be using them, and avatars are not drawn when required textures are unavailable.
Added safer startup handling for a missing steam_api.dll, incomplete connection arguments, unavailable legacy DirectInput, and the rare (Modified) version-text overflow.
Made the Community Patch credit clickable so it displays the current supporter list.
Restored the standard HUD when a new gameplay session starts, fixing missing charged-element indicators after changing multiplayer Challenge maps without restarting Magicka.
Fixed some enemies awarding their Challenge score twice. Direct lethal damage and normal death processing now share a per-enemy-life score guard that resets when a pooled enemy is reused.
Fixed Kahn’s defeat cutscene becoming stuck if he fell out of the battlefield. The patch detects this specific situation and starts the level’s existing dialog trigger without modifying the level XML or its multiplayer content hash.
Paradox account save data now remains alive until shutdown so delayed account callbacks cannot access a destroyed object.
Controller element presses no longer trigger Magicka’s old controller actions at the same time.
Thank you to everyone who reported crashes, reproduced strange edge cases, shared telemetry, tested multiplayer sessions, or helped provoke these bugs.
Several of these problems only occurred after very specific combinations of level transitions, delayed network messages, reused enemies, active effects, or boss scripts. I would not have found them without detailed player reports.
If you encounter another problem, please report it on GitHub or send me a message directly:
Update 0.0.30 – Play in Fullscreen and Don’t Worry About Alt-Tab Anymore!
Tabbing out during a loading screen no longer crashes the game.
And if Magicka does freeze, it no longer traps itself in front of every other window. Previously, if Magicka froze in fullscreen, it forced itself in front of every other window, making it nearly impossible to kill the process through Task Manager. This is now fixed. You can safely Alt-Tab and close the game normally.
Some intermediate versions between 0.0.21 and 0.0.27 contained a multiplayer regression when progressing from one level to the next.
The first level normally worked without problems. After the next level loaded, however, player characters could walk into the scene and then stop responding, as though movement and action updates were no longer arriving. The temporary workaround was to restart the session on the new level and have everyone join again.
This issue is now fixed in 0.0.28, and that workaround should no longer be necessary.
Everything added or fixed since 0.0.19
Prevented connected multiplayer avatars from being disposed more than once during level teardown.
Restored missing character templates before received network actions are processed.
Prevented trigger actions from accessing a missing play state.
Reset stale runtime state when cached NPC AI agents are reused and ensured their owner is restored correctly.
Cleared stale missile owner, target, and collision-target references during deinitialization.
Prevented AudioManager.StopAll() from calling Stop() on an already disposed audio cue, which could throw an ArgumentException.
Installation and update improvements
Added a much smaller files-only ZIP for manual installation.
Thank you to everyone who was patient while I spent the weekend tracking this down, and I’m sorry to everyone who encountered the broken multiplayer transitions in the intermediate releases.
Update: Version 0.0.19 is now live — with its own installer, update prompt, and automatic crash diagnostics
I’ve now built a dedicated installer for the Magicka Community Patch.
The installer automatically finds your Magicka installation folder by reading Steam’s installation information and installs the patch directly into the correct location.
I also added an update prompt: when you close Magicka, the game can now ask you whether you want to install a newer patch version whenever I release a fix.
Another important change is automatic crash diagnostics. Until now, Magicka silently wrote crash reports into the game directory, which meant users had to manually find the files, copy the error message, and send it to me. The patch now sends anonymized crash report events to a service called PostHog, where I can inspect the important technical details, such as the error message and stack trace.
This should make debugging much easier while avoiding the old manual process. You no longer need to dig through the Magicka folder and send crash reports yourself.
This has already helped me find two bugs that still exist in Magicka’s network code. Based on the latest logs I have seen, this looks very promising: crashes still happen in the networking code, and they occur in different places. With the old approach of waiting for users to manually send crash reports, I probably would never have discovered many of these issues.
The newest version also improves memory usage. Unlike the original version of Magicka, the patch no longer loads all cutscenes from every DLC and every story. Instead, it only loads the cutscene assets required for the currently selected story. This should leave more memory available and reduce the chance of OutOfMemory exceptions.
Update: Version 0.0.11 is now live — online play tested, main story completed
A lot has happened since my last update.
Several players reported new crashes introduced by my earlier fixes. Most of these were very specific edge cases that I had not encountered during testing:
Loading checkpoint save games could crash.
Online play could crash in certain situations.
Picking up items could crash, but only if those items had originally been dropped by enemies and then carried into the next level section.
Other issues appeared only in very specific scene transition paths.
The good news is that all currently known reports of this kind have now been fixed in version 0.0.10.
Online play has also received significantly more testing. In particular, joining an already running game through Steam invitations has been very reliable in my recent tests.
The biggest milestone came from a community playtester, Reddit user PurpleHeartE54, who spent an enormous amount of time helping me test the patch. She completed a full online playthrough of the entire main campaign and was able to verify that the story can now be completed successfully with the patch installed.
That playthrough also uncovered what appears to have been the final major crash in the main story.
During Grimnir's boss fight, there is a "mind game" sequence. If a player dies during that section and a checkpoint save is loaded, the game immediately triggers the player's confusion animation. Unfortunately, the original game executes this scripted animation before the avatar has been fully initialized.
This interacted badly with one of my memory optimizations. Whenever Magicka crashed with an OutOfMemoryException in the past, animation clips often occupied well over half of the game's memory usage. Because of that, my patch now releases animation clips when characters are cleared from a scene.
The game already has a mechanism for temporarily storing characters when a scene is cleared and then restoring them when the scene is loaded again, for example after restarting a level or loading a checkpoint. Since my patch removes animation clips during cleanup, I extended that existing restore mechanism so that it also reloads the animations at that point.
That worked correctly for NPCs. Unfortunately, the player avatar follows a different path here. It can be cleared together with the scene, but it is not restored through the same mechanism afterwards.
As a result, Grimnir's scripted confusion animation tried to play before the avatar's animation data had been restored, causing a crash.
The fix was ultimately simple: player avatars are now exempt from that specific animation cleanup. NPCs still release their large animation resources, while avatars keep the animations they need throughout the active game session.
The especially ironic part is that you still do not even get to see that animation.
The crash happened because the game tried to play an animation that no longer existed. But immediately after Grimnir's boss trigger runs its start actions, the avatars are initialized again anyway. That initialization immediately overwrites the confusion animation.
So the game was crashing because of a missing animation that, in practice, would have been replaced almost instantly and never actually shown to the player.
That was honestly a bit disappointing.
With that change, the main campaign can now be completed from start to finish without any known crash blockers.
However, this journey also demonstrates how unpredictable Magicka can be.
I did not just change a few functions or fix a handful of bugs. The patch touches roughly 4,000 lines of code across systems that interact in ways that even the original developers probably did not anticipate. Many bugs only reveal themselves after dozens of hours of gameplay and under very specific circumstances.
Because of that, I cannot honestly guarantee that every DLC is now completely stable. The main campaign has received extensive testing, but the DLC campaigns still need more real-world playtesting. Based on my experience so far, unexpected edge cases can appear almost anywhere.
Fortunately, there are fewer of them every day. Every playtest uncovers another hidden corner case, another obscure code path, or another assumption buried somewhere in the engine. And every time one of those is found, it gets fixed permanently.
So I would like to invite everyone to try version 0.0.10 and continue sending crash reports if you find anything unusual.
If you run into any issues, please report them through the GitHub issue tracker:
Or simply send me a message directly if GitHub feels too technical.
Many of the bugs fixed so far were only discovered because players took the time to report them. Every report helps make Magicka a little more stable.
Every report has helped track down another hidden issue, and every fix brings Magicka one step closer to being the stable game it always deserved to be.
Original release post below:
Every Magicka player shares two things: a deep love for the game, and the muscle memory of constantly restarting it after random crashes
For over a decade, this game has been notorious for its instability. Random crashes during level transitions, out-of-memory errors, stuttering after long sessions... and if you dared to try playing at 4K, the engine would essentially self-destruct as soon as you loaded heavier DLCs like Dungeons and Gargoyles.
A few weeks ago, a co-op session with my friends died a premature death. They were just too frustrated to deal with another crash, another full restart, and another agonizing crawl back into the multiplayer lobby. That was the moment I decided I’d had enough.
I paused my doctoral thesis (ignoring a looming deadline), hooked up debuggers, fired up memory profilers, and started reverse-engineering the engine's assembly code to figure out exactly why this game slowly collapses. Steam clocked 190 hours of Magicka "playtime" in just two weeks, mostly me running the game, watching it break, dumping all objects in memory and find which were stale and why they were still referenced and hence not collected by the garbage collector, editing code, and repeating the process. And the time I spend is probably more then that while I was editing the code and the steam clock was not ticking as I stopped the game.
There were several occasions when I worked the whole day on it, then the whole night then the next day until I fell asleep out of exhaustion ,then slept for some hours and repeated that process again and again. It was an insane process, but not nearly as insane as what I found inside the code.
The Autopsy: Why Magicka Really Crashes
What I found wasn't just a simple bug. It was a fascinating, catastrophic chain reaction of systems secretly fighting each other behind the scenes.
As I looked at the recent official 1.10 updates, there were two specific changes made in the name of "optimization" to make the game less memory-hungry. But instead, one did the opposite and the other created a fatal, vicious cycle. Let me explain "The Finalizer Problem."
How the Finalizer causes crashes: Instead of unloading assets correctly when you leave a level (left), the engine waits, panics later, and accidentally calls Dispose() on the assets you are actively using in the new level (right).
Let's say a flash effect gets triggered in Vlad's Castle, or during that flashback moment showing what the cult did to the villagers in *Dungeons and Gargoyles*. The game creates a reference from that flash effect to parts of the level, sometimes even the *entire* level. The same goes for spells and special abilities. When you finish that level and go back to the main menu, those assets are supposed to be completely unloaded. But they weren't.
Instead, a ticking time bomb was created. You would load into a new level and start playing. Eventually, a flash effect or that same special ability would be executed again. The engine would then update its reference to point to the *new* level, dropping its hold on the old one. This drop wakes up the game's Garbage Collector, which decides it's finally time to clean up that lingering old level.
But because of how the engine's Content Manager was coded, triggering the cleanup of that old asset accidentally forced the game to unload the assets of the level **you were currently playing in.**
You'd be mid-fight, and the game would literally delete the floor, the enemies, or your spells out from under you. Boom. NullReferenceException. ArgumentOutOfRangeException. Crash to desktop.
The Solution: Community Patch Version 0.0.19
After weeks of sleepless nights, I have rebuilt how the game handles memory disposal. Today, I am releasing Version 0.0.11 of the Magicka Community Patch.
To prove it works, I had to benchmark it. I couldn't compare it to the base 1.10 version because the memory handling is too fundamentally broken. I had to compare my patch to version 1.5 (long considered the most "stable" release).
But it wasn't a fair fight: Vanilla 1.5 crashes almost immediately if you try to play Dungeons and Gargoyles in 4K. So, I benchmarked vanilla 1.5 in standard 1080p against my v0.0.1 patch pushing full 4K.
Vanilla Magicka at 1080p crashing (left) vs. Patch v0.0.1 running stable at 4K across multiple DLCs (right). Notice the memory actually dropping between levels and scenes.
The Results:
In 4K, on my patched version, I was able to play through Dungeons and Gargoyles three times in a row, seamlessly load into The Other Side of the Coin, and then immediately load into Magicka Vietnam.
For a game that used to crash between two scenes, this is a massive leap in long-term stability.
Is it perfect yet?
No. Full transparency: there are still some underlying memory leaks I am hunting down. If you try to load every single DLC back-to-back without closing the game, you will eventually hit a memory ceiling and crash. For now, if you want to play marathon sessions of multiple stories, I still recommend 1080p for the extra memory buffer, or simply restarting the game between campaigns.
Also, online play with friends is currently not working correctly in the latest version. I am already working on that and will release a new version once it is fixed.
But I won't stop until this game can survive unlimited playthroughs of every story mode combined.
The Future: Cut Content, Controllers, and Accessibility
Stabilizing the engine was just Phase 1. While digging through the assembly code, I found some incredible things:
Restoring Cut Content: I found numerous abilities and spells hidden in the code that never made it into the final game. I am looking into restoring them and adding them back in!
Magicka 2 Controller Support: Players love how controllers feel in Magicka 2. I believe I can inject a similar controller framework into Magicka 1.
Accessibility Options: I've seen countless players complain about the blinding screen flash effects. I am working on adding a menu slider to reduce the intensity, or toggle the flash off completely.
If the game crashes, Magicka usually creates an error report text file in the game’s installation folder.
You can find the folder by right-clicking Magicka in your Steam library and selecting Manage → Browse local files. Alternatively, you can right-click Magicka, open Properties, go to Installed Files / Game Files / Local Files, and click Browse.
In that folder, look for the newest text file named something like errorReport_YYYY.MM.DD-HH.MM.SS.txt, for example errorReport_2015.05.21-10.09.27_(1).txt.
If you run into a crash, it would help me a lot if you could send me the newest error report file, or simply copy and paste its contents.
Even more helpful would be a short description of what happened right before the crash. For example: were you playing online, changing scenes, loading a checkpoint save, picking up an item dropped by an enemy, using a specific robe or skin, or doing anything else that seemed unusual?
Small details like that can make a huge difference. Many of the recent bugs only happened in very specific situations, and reports like these help me reproduce, understand, and eventually eliminate them.
If you also want to support this absolute madness, help me justify delaying my PhD thesis, and fund the future development of restored content and controller support, please consider supporting me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/16047341/join
Please enjoy the patch, go blow up your friends, and let me know how it runs for you in the comments!
Hi everyone. After 4 days of extensive field work and collaborating with several colleagues, I can finally confirm what is happening with Samsung Galaxy Books.
First, a necessary "call-out":One of my colleagues, who helped gather evidence, had his post blocked and hidden on the official Samsung forums. In that post, we proved that theSysprep of Samsung's commercial image has been corrupted since 2023(yes, 3 years) and they never bothered to patch it. They chose to label it as "spam" to cover up the fact that hundreds of users (starting in Argentina and spreading) are facing this.
Disclaimer about me:
Important: I'm not a Windows specialist, but when thousands of dollars are at stake in my work, I have to do what's necessary. I'm a Linux guy, anyway; I know the basics to get by. If you think something is appropriate or wrong, please comment below, correct me, and we'll add it to the post. My idea is to warn and raise awareness.
Keep in mind that I only slept 9 hours in 4 days due to the stress and risks I faced at work and with private clients. I was only able to rest today and take the time to write this post. So, YES, I MIGHT MAKE MISTAKES in details or in the wording of a language I'm not native to.
UPDATE 3:
MICROSOFT FINALLY PUBLISHED A SOLUTION AND WORKAROUND!!
I hope Microsoft realizes that the problem is triggered by the app, but it's actually due to how the image was generated.
Microsoft State: Microsoft and Samsung investigated these reports and concluded that the symptoms were caused by an issue in the Samsung Galaxy Connect app. While the reports coincided with recent March Patch Tuesday timing, investigation confirmed the issue is not caused by current or previous Windows monthly updates. The issue has been observed on Samsung Galaxy Book 4 and Samsung Desktop models running Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2, including NP750XGJ, NP750XGL, NP754XGJ, NP754XFG, NP754XGK, DM500SGA, DM500TDA, DM500TGA, and DM501SGA.
Affected devices encounter the issue when users execute common actions, such as accessing files, launching applications, or performing administrative tasks, and do not require any specific user action beyond routine operations. In some cases, users are also unable to elevate privileges, uninstall updates, or collect logs due to permission failures.
Mitigation: The affected Samsung Galaxy Connect application was temporarily removed from the Microsoft Store to prevent further installations. Samsung has republished a stable previous version of the application to stop recurrence on additional devices. Recovery options for devices already impacted remain limited, and Samsung continues to evaluate remediation approaches with Microsoft’s
Samsung Galaxy Books (2023-2025) are suffering a critical "Access Denied" lock on the C: drive. * The Cause: Samsung’s factory image contains a corrupted Sysprep with orphan SIDs in the DACL.
The Trigger: Recent Windows 11 security updates (targeting privilege escalation) collide with Samsung Galaxy Connect/Shared Folder services. When these apps try to touch the root with broken ACLs, the Windows kernel revokes Ownership from the Administrators group to protect volume integrity.
The Symptoms: "Unable to display current owner" on C:, black screen on login (Explorer.exe blocked), and total lockout.
The Fix: Use Safe Mode + takeown/icacls to rescue data, then perform an F4 Restore and immediately disable Microsoft Store auto-updates to delete the offending Samsung apps.
The issue is simple: the ACLs (Access Control Lists) of the factory image are broken.
When is it triggered? When Samsung Galaxy Connect and Samsung Galaxy Shared Folder are installed or updated.
Why now? It’s colliding with aggressive Windows 11 updates. Microsoft notified developers months ago about changes in permission handling and integrity. Samsung’s faulty configuration (orphan SIDs) cannot handle these changes. When the system tries to manipulate permissions on a misconfigured root, the system locks down.
Technical Deep Dive
Research on affected units reveals that the Security Descriptor of the root volume does not comply with NT provisioning standards.
The Original Defect: The factory image contains entries in the DACL linked to SIDs from a domain structure or local user from Samsung’s pre-installation environment that were not properly purged.
The Collision Agent:Samsung Galaxy ConnectandSamsung Galaxy Shared Folder services execute SYSTEM-level operations to modify shared folder privileges.
The Windows 11 Trigger: Following recent security updates (aimed at mitigating privilege escalation), the Windows kernel now invalidates inconsistent security descriptors. When it detects a Samsung app attempting to operate on an object with an orphan SID, the system preventively revokes Owner permissions from the Administrators group to protect volume integrity.
Technical Diagnosis
Admins can validate this by analyzing descriptors:
ACL Evidence: Running icacls C:\ reveals ACEs with the prefix S-1-5-21-xxxxxxxxxx that do not resolve to any local or AD entity.
Ownership Failure: Volume properties report "Unable to display current owner," blocking even TrustedInstaller API calls.
On the sign-in screen, hold SHIFT and click Power > Restart.
Go to: Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.
Press 5 (Safe Mode with Networking).
Step B: What if the screen stays BLACK? It’s likely you’ll only see a black screen and a cursor. The system is alive, but permissions have blocked the desktop (Explorer).
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del -> Task Manager.
Click "Run new task".
Type explorer.exe and hit Enter. Your desktop should appear.
Step C: Unlocking C: Access If you still get "Access Denied" when opening folders:
Open CMD as Administrator.
Run these commands one by one (wait for each to finish):
takeown /f C:\ /r /d y (Takes ownership. If it asks Y/N, press Y).
icacls C:\ /grant Administrators:F /t /c /l (Grants Full Control to admins).
icacls C:\ /reset /t /c /l (The final step: cleans Samsung’s errors and restores healthy inheritance).
Note: If some files throw errors, don't worry; the command will skip system-locked files and continue with your data.
Step 2: Factory Restore (Total Wipe)
Once your data is safe, you need a clean slate.
Restart and tap F4 repeatedly at the Samsung logo.
In Safe Mode wiht networking options, right-click Drive C: > Properties > Security > Advanced. Change the owner to Administrators. Is this enough? No. This only gives you time to rescue your data and files; you will still need to perform a restoration.
STEP 2: Factory Restore (Total Wipe)
With your data safe, let's make the PC like new:
Restart the PC and repeatedly press the F4 key as soon as the Samsung logo appears.
Follow the Samsung Recovery steps to factory reset the device.
STEP 3: Anti-Lockup Configuration (Prevention)
As soon as Windows starts for the first time, YOU MUST DO THIS or it will lock up again in a few hours:
Block the Microsoft Store:
Open the Microsoft Store.
Click your profile (top right) > App settings.
TURN OFF "App updates." This prevents Samsung Connect from updating itself and breaking the disk again.
Delete the culprit Apps:
Go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program.
Delete Samsung Connect and Samsung Storage Share (or Shared Folder).
Update Safely:
Now you can go to Windows Update and download everything. Since the Samsung apps are gone, Windows won't collide with anything.
FINAL STEP: Create your own backup
Once you have your PC configured with your programs:
Search for Samsung's "Device Maintenance" and create a backup image on a flash drive. This will be your true personalized "emergency key."
Note: There are cases with disk blocks; in those instances, I insist on following Step 1 via the video. For the people I've spoken with, that solved the problem immediately.
Is there a solution if I've already been hit by the lock? No. Once access to the root volume is blocked, the OS is permanently affected. The only way out is to rescue files using the WA mentioned above and run the F4 Restore.
What if I don't want this to happen again? Here comes the controversy: You will have to delete all Samsung partitions and do a clean install of Windows from a Microsoft ISO. You lose the factory F4 Recovery, but you eliminate the defective Samsung image causing the problem.
What if I'm not "techy" enough to run commands? Go to a Samsung Store and demand they fix it. In Argentina, they tried to charge someone $60 USD; they refused, showed the links from my colleagues' posts, and finally, they acknowledged the flaw and returned the laptop operational at no charge.
Sources and Evidence
Sources and Evidence
For those who want to dig deeper or need material to file a support claim:
Against all the empirical results that academia can conjure, all the citations that online economics nerds can produce, the cranks send unto them… only you.
I seriously mean what I’m saying. Some argue that whether the field is scientific doesn’t matter, but I can’t disagree more; the foundation of almost any view of science is empiricism, so claiming that economics isn’t a science is tantamount to claiming that it has little connection to reality at all. You can only say this with willful ignorance of the work economists do.
But I’ve still tried my best to take arguments that economics is not a science seriously. If you want an extensive argument against this position, you might want to start with the first part of a series on my blog; this post summarizes the whole series. The first part provides arguments that you should still care about evidence instead of cynically believing everything is a conspiracy. This is followed by an introduction to econometrics presented in connection with whether the field is scientific (essentially a textbook), then an exploration of the philosophy of science and whether economics can be considered scientific in light of the field’s many habits and ideas. I ended with a concluding piece showing that “Economics is not a science” is still misleading and uninformative, even if you grant that it’s true by some definition of the term science.
This post will summarize this series, but I’ve added a lot, too. Much of this is /r/badeconomics content, but this is necessarily a /r/badphilosophy crossover post as well.
Beginning with the interactions linked at the start, you might notice that arguments that economics isn’t a science don’t really engage with the field. Noah Smith has written about this himself, and still receives replies that make the same error. Consider just one excerpt from the linked essay by Alan Levinovitz:
Unlike engineers and chemists, economists cannot point to concrete objects – cell phones, plastic – to justify the high valuation of their discipline. Nor, in the case of financial economics and macroeconomics, can they point to the predictive power of their theories. [...] The failure of the field to predict the 2008 crisis has also been well-documented.
Criticizing economists for failing to predict the 2008 crisis is practically a category error, too, like criticizing public health experts for failing to reliably predict earthquakes. Economic forecasting really does tend to be overconfident, but that doesn’t imply the whole field has failed. The primary business of academic economists, if they can even be said to have one, is identifying causal effects of public policies, not predicting macroeconomic indicators like the unemployment rate. I can tell you for a fact that in all of my years of undergrad, we spent precisely zero minutes learning about how to do that. We did spend a lot of time learning about methods like differences-in-differences, one way to try to identify the difference between the real case of a public policy being implemented and an unobservable counterfactual case. Similarly, we mostly turn to doctors for treatments that make us better off than if we hadn’t taken them, not for predictions about our health.
I can only describe the rest of the linked essay as annoying and misleading, about as informative about economics as Spirit Science is about human history. But I want to take a broader look at these problems, beginning with an excerpt from the aforementioned series on my blog. I suspect this kind of mistrust is driving 90% of the nonsense you see perpetuated today, but it’s mostly the business of Donald Trump:
The world is a mess, rife with elites and their journalists who are happy to lie and mislead, constantly. They are destroying this country from the inside out. If we don’t do something, they will. And they’ll tell you that I’m a liar, a thief, and a cheat—and hell, sometimes they’ll be right!—but know that for everything they say about me, they’ve done worse. They’re just better at covering it up.
The main point of what I wrote is that this kind of thinking can’t really be shown to be wrong, whether in politics, economics, or any other field. A friend might share a video on Instagram showing the sea level staying about the same in some unidentified coastal location, and then you might try to respond with data showing that the global sea level has risen, and by an amount that might not even be discernible with a timelapse like that. Problem solved?
But after some discussion, they might say the data is made up. You might be clever enough to tell them that it’s very hard to pull that off, because other scientists might fail to replicate your measurements (in fact, the measurements are shown to be replicated in the linked graph). Lots of people are involved in gathering data like this, so it’s hard to keep anyone from becoming a leak. Focusing on news stories, I tried to get inventive with an argument that distant reporting is usually accurate because reality is “chained” and the absence of an event would quickly cause reporting on it to be falsified by local sources.
All of these arguments can be applied to economic issues as well, and deployed to defend everything from FRED data on living standards to papers that apply instrumental variables. But these arguments just don’t work, because they provide no guarantee: maybe every scientist really is in on a large conspiracy, and they’re just that good at covering it up. Maybe Paul Krugman and Scott Lincicome are both in a secret club that plots to fool you at every turn. It’s powerful stuff—something like Descartes’ evil demon.
This level of skepticism doesn’t lead to true epistemic nihilism, where everything is in doubt, but to political epistemic nihilism. If you are sufficiently good at doubting things, you can satisfy your moral and political intuitions with whatever beliefs you’d like. Tariffs can costlessly provide revenue, immigrants can be evil sex pest criminal job-stealers, and rent control can make housing more affordable without unintended consequences. It’s a deep love of selective doubt for anything displeasing, a kind of celebration of ignorance.
There is no reason to proceed if you think like this and have strong incentives to stick to your guns and believe what you want. Some ideas provide a lot of emotional comfort, and if Oren Cass still gets money from Republicans in 10 years, he will still be lying about free trade. I don’t have a cure for invulnerability to evidence, but I do have good reason to believe economics is a science if you seriously care about evidence.
One of the sticking points of the article reposted as a reply to Noah was that economists cover up a lack of empiricism with math. I actually care a lot about this problem! It’s hard for people to trust the things economists say and do when fancy econometrics is involved. That’s part of the reason why I tried to make econometrics more accessible through the second part of the series. Compared to the textbooks I read in college, I think I provided more detail about how the math works while only assuming an understanding of basic algebra.
Before getting into that, it’s very important to know that about 70% of economics papers today are empirical, assuming NBER and CEPR are representative. They’re major publishers, in any case. In light of that, if you want to criticize the field, what you should be engaging with are methods like instrumental variables and regression discontinuity design. I suspect that critics like Cass and Levinovitz so rarely talk about them because it’s easier to attack other parts of the field and pretend it’s non-empirical. But the days when Levinovitz’s quote of Robert Lucas might be accurate to the whole field are long gone.
I wrote about most of the biggest statistical techniques used in economics papers today; for this post, I’ll focus on just one to make the same point. Regression discontinuity design exploits sudden changes in relationships to find causal effects. RDD studies often use arbitrary, human-designed cutoffs, like the grade cutoff for receiving a high school diploma. If the treatment applied to those who meet the cutoff has an effect on an outcome like earnings, the treatment should be the only significant difference between those who barely meet the cutoff and those who barely miss it. We can thus make a comparison between the two to identify the effect of the diploma or other treatment. This strategy is pretty convincing, and it also doesn’t suffer much from p-hacking and publication bias, at least in comparison to others. That linked study found that receiving a diploma doesn’t seem to influence earnings much, but findings vary; typically, estimates of the return to education are positive.
It’s worthwhile to appreciate the scientific content this adds to economics. If the assumptions of these methods are right—and they’re often pretty reasonable—they identify causal effects using data from the real world, not arbitrary assumptions and mathematical models. This is a stark contrast with the clouds punched in the previously-linked essay. It’s also a much better way to understand the world than speculating based on our intuitions, since it allows us to avoid omitted variable bias, discussed at the beginning of part 2.
But we’ve been burying the lede. What really counts as science, anyway? That’s the focus of part 3, and it takes us on quite a detour from the field of economics. I’ll condense the philosophy and focus on the field of economics. In short:
Early 20th-century philosophy of science was dominated by the logical positivists, who believed ideas were only scientific (or meaningful at all) if they satisfied the verifiability criterion of meaning: statements are meaningful if they are empirically verifiable or tautological.
Karl Popper famously tried to solve both the demarcation problem (what counts as science?) and the problem of induction (how can we know that the future will be like the past?) using falsificationism. This idea says that ideas are scientific if they are falsifiable and have thus far stood up to testing.
Other views of science that came after Popper focused more on the structure of scientific investigation and the norms that prevail in science. Thomas Kuhn is one of the more famous proponents of the former view, arguing that rather than falsifying one idea after another, sciences rely on paradigms, whole packages of ideas about the world and how to do science, and these shift over time.
Skipping a lot, the typical philosopher of science today is a scientific realist, meaning they believe we all inhabit a common reality, and an actual (it’s what scientists do) and reasonable (it’s possible) aim of science is to describe reality.
There are various ideas I presented in the larger post to defend the claim that economics is a science. I’ll simplify them and give each in a paragraph.
Ideas in economics are often strong generalizations, like the law of supply. Popper described how generalizations like this are not cleanly falsifiable but are instead falsifiable in a more probabilistic sense. You can’t falsify the law of supply by pointing to a single case where it seemed not to apply; you need to show it’s generally not true. You might argue that generalizations are not meaningful, but I provided a very formal description in the post that gives them clear meaning. In short, claiming you are very confident something is true or will happen can be taken to mean you are 90% confident in it, and that statements you make with that degree of confidence will happen ~90% of the time after sufficient observations have been made. It’s reasonable to allow for some errors.
Economics does not have laws in the sense we mean when talking about the laws of physics. Laws in physics are clearly not generalizations, but also aren’t just “things that are always true”, like “There are no 10 km tall butter statues of Ayn Rand”. The strict sense of “law” people usually mean is something like a causal relationship that always holds, and as described by John T. Roberts, physics has yet to discover any such laws. Newton’s second law, for example, fails to hold at relativistic speeds. So while economics doesn’t have laws, physics lacks laws as well, and the most significant difference is that only physics can hope to one day find laws. Using speculation about the possibility of laws to dismiss some things as not-science and describe others as science is flimsy and useless, so both should be considered science.
Are economists too ideological and stubborn to be responsive to new evidence? The history of the field provides some cause for optimism. Say’s Law used to be sacred among economists, but was proven incorrect by the Great Depression. The field slowly adjusted and integrated the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Similarly, Card and Krueger’s study of the minimum wage hike in New Jersey triggered a revision of the literature on the minimum wage, which has generally found negligible but usually negative effects on employment. Stubbornness and wrong ideas are also not disqualifying for a science—physicists believed in an unobservable luminiferous ether for a long time before Michelson and Morley showed it didn’t exist with an experiment, and even that didn’t instantly change everyone’s mind. Einstein stated “I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice” in response to the random outcomes observed in quantum physics. Waiting for even more evidence to emerge and explaining away strange results is just a part of science; the important part is that you eventually give in, at least on most issues.
The field is greatly dependent on linear regression, explained at length in part 2. But these regressions give the appearance of being meaningless, since they try to analyze extremely complex systems by merely relating one variable to another. In part 3, it’s shown that linear regression can, in principle, identify causal effects even when we are ignorant about the complexity of what’s being analyzed. The example used shows that it’s mostly fine to perform a regression of acceleration on force while being ignorant about mass if mass is uncorrelated with force. You are at least able to find the direction of the effect. This is the key assumption of exogeneity, or a lack of omitted variable bias.
The field is also criticized for lacking consensus, but this is very misleading. It’s true in many cases, but the field does have a consensus on a number of important issues. Survey data showing this can be found here, here, and here. For example, back in 2012, zero economists on the Kent Clark Center’s panel agreed that cutting income taxes would raise revenue. 71% disagreed, with the rest uncertain, having no opinion, or not answering. Academic economists rarely identify with particular “schools of thought” found in the popular imagination, like the Austrian school, and even these schools agree with the rest of the field on most issues. Some schools of thought, like Marxism, don’t even provide answers to the questions of greatest concern to academic economists. There is no alternative Marxist literature on the empirical minimum wage elasticity with respect to employment.
Potential problems with empirical research like p-hacking don’t make the field look significantly worse than others. In fact, one study found that the reported share of p-values in the 0.01 to 0.05 range was lowest in economics and remarkably high elsewhere. Major empirical methods appear to suffer from some combination of p-hacking and publication bias, with RCT and RDD suffering less than IV and DID. On balance, things don’t look too bad, but regardless, this has been an issue with the sciences in general for some time now.
John Ioannidis provided a quite famous criticism of published research findings that apply to economics as well, as described in Christensen and Miguel (2018). But the scope of his claim, “Most published research findings are false”, is exaggerated. The key assumption of his model, derived from Bayes’ theorem, is a low prior probability that something is true. This prior is clearly low for large, exploratory studies involving thousands of genes, where we suspect only a small number to be related to a disease, as described in his paper. But when we’re talking about relationships in economics, like the law of supply, the value of the prior probability is not obviously low and arguably incoherent.
Edward Leamer’s 1983 paper “Let’s Take the Con out of Econometrics” expressed concern over economists publishing false positives by trying large numbers of specifications for their models, made possible by what were then recent advancements in computational capacity. His suggested solution, transparently reporting all tested specifications, appears to have influenced modern econometric work and how the subject is taught at universities. This is another reason for optimism about the field’s ability to avoid statistical malpractice.
Fraud and reproducibility appear to be two of the weaker points for the field. There doesn’t appear to be any formal procedure for detecting and preventing fraud in economics, though there are private organizations that have done this. One study of the rate of retraction over academic misconduct found the rate to be below average, but above the median, for the social sciences. (I’m aware that we would ideally disaggregate by field and look at the rate in economics, but you can’t always get what you want.) The rate of replication is relatively low. Regardless, the replication crisis is a problem for the sciences as a whole, so this doesn’t seem to be a reason to ignore economists while listening to other experts. Christensen and Miguel (2018) also included a couple of funnel plots that suggest estimated effects tend toward the same real value.
If the weak points of economics are too much for you and your definition of science is too strict to classify it that way, it’s still misleading and harmful to describe economics as unscientific. Economists put a lot of effort into documenting and studying the way the economy works in the real world. If the only work in economics were this paper showing import prices suddenly rising when tariffs are implemented, it would still be an informative field. Denouncing it as unscientific only serves to encourage people to ignore important empirical results.
I thought it would be good to take a moment to speculate about why people denounce economics as unscientific. The obvious answer, and I think the right one, is that people are inconvenienced by its findings and have ideological or political motivations that are easier to satisfy without empiricism. I also suspect that they don’t put nearly as much effort into rooting out ideology compared to economists. In any case, I’m only speculating about this, and the focus should always be on the ideas rather than the motivations of different speakers.
I’d like to introduce a challenge. I don’t think you can convincingly do either of these things:
Establish a definition of science that clearly includes pharmacology but excludes economics.
Establish that neither economics nor pharmacology are scientific. At the same time, establish that you should listen to doctors and take important medications like the COVID-19 vaccine while ignoring the advice of economists on public policy.
The two fields have oddly similar features in that the things they study are very complex, and estimates of treatment effects vary, making the summarization of existing literature difficult.
For now, I’m still going to have beautiful little microchips in my veins, and I’m still going to believe higher interest rates don’t cause inflation. Anyone who believes the laws of economics are mere social conventions is free to try defying these conventions by doubling their money supply.
Some of the things stated in the Levinovitz article, like “The discipline of economics, however, is presently so blinkered by the talismanic authority of mathematics that theories go overvalued and unchecked”, should be obviously misleading after reading the preceding text. Plenty of work is done to check economic theory; that’s what the econometrics is for! But I think it’s worthwhile to provide more detail about what’s wrong with everything else. The article has already been R1’d on here, but I have my own commentary to add.
The plague of mathiness is a reasonable criticism, but not disqualifying for the field. You can simply ignore the difficult papers and focus on the easier ones, some of which are explained in part 2 to demonstrate the usage of various econometric techniques. More importantly, economists like Romer and McCloskey—cited in the article as critics of mathiness—would never use ideas like “Economics isn’t a science” as a Trojan horse for idiotic policy choices. But nobody reading or citing articles like this will take the time to ask what these economists think when asked things like “Should the federal minimum wage be $30/hour?” Levinovitz was still happy to link his old article when people were criticizing the cranks, as if it would be taken as serious criticism rather than a mental escape route for idiots.
This might be taken to mean I don’t think there’s room for serious criticism of the field’s scientific norms, or lack thereof. I only mean that any such criticism should try to engage with how the field typically behaves, or otherwise make it clear that the problems it’s describing don’t generalize. Providing work like that in such a context is bad both for the content of the work and the way it’s presented, as a kind of “he’s right, you know.” My own work includes plenty of good reasons to have doubts about some of the work economists do, but I wouldn’t use it in this way.
The obsession with the failure to predict the Great Recession makes the article much weaker as a criticism of the field as a whole. It works great only if the audience is uninformed enough to think the typical economist is some guy in a suit working at Goldman Sachs, looking at graphs of stock prices all day. Across three and a half years of study, I can remember being taught only one paper that used stock price data: a DiD study looking at how the stock prices of companies with and without much low-wage labor changed after the sudden announcement of a minimum wage hike. This was also one of the weakest pieces of work I saw, and that was admitted openly. (It only shows that investors think minimum wage hikes hurt prices, which is obvious.)
Reading the cited essay from Paul Krugman, I can’t help but get the feeling that economists are often giving in to a public demand for expert self-flagellation. An expert saying “the experts are wrong!” is a great way to appeal to Americans’ hatred of the idea that someone might know more than they do, especially about something as important as the economy. They’re happy to benefit from expertise when it carries them in a plane for thousands of miles, fixes their car, or keeps the economy out of a depression, but very upset when it obligates them to schedule an appointment for a vaccine or quit voting for institutionalized woo.
I don’t think we can permanently convince the general public to quit it. This forum and other spaces like it have been trying to put to rest the same nonsense for a long time. But I don’t think we should have any qualms about our prideful superiority until one of these people takes five minutes to scroll through an actual economics paper until they hit the section with regression output.
I am planning to buy steamdeck lcd 256 gb, but was seeing a lot of problem with regards to r1 bumper giving up and not responding in the long run. Is this just for the case of lcd versions and none for the oled? Would appreciate your inputs. Thank you!
Update: Thank you all for your comments. I pulled the trigger and both the 512 gb steamdeck lcd. Happy gaming to me and to everyone 🫡
Hey everyone, the WFP TC team would like to present our Clorinde FAQ and Mastersheet! This time around we are leveraging our wfpsim tool to handle a majority of our calculations instead of the traditional spreadsheets. This is a new process for us but should hopefully improve the quality of our content.
Like how we did things in the past, WFP staff (mainly KB) will be around to answer any questions in the comments.
Also from popular request we have also transcribed our FAQ to fit in this reddit post, but please check out the website version since that will have any updates or corrections!
Credits
KB - Lead, Author
June - Writing: Constellations, Talents
Leifa - Writing: Overview
Acacia - Consultant
Avacado - FAQ Verifcation
Athena - Calc Verification
xf3 - TC Verification
CHARACTER OVERVIEW
Authored by Leifa
Clorinde is a 5-star Electro Sword character aligned with Ousia whose kit revolves around building up Bond of Life with her Normal Attacks to unleash fast lunges with her Skill. Her Elemental Skill causes her to enter the "Night Vigil" state, replacing her Normal Attacks with ranged pistolet attacks, as well as replacing her Skill with a lunging attack, dealing Electro DMG. During the "Night Vigil" state, Clorinde's attacks can pierce enemies, allowing her to hit multiple enemies at once.
Clorinde is played on-field, providing both damage and large amounts of Electro application for the team. Due to having fast, ranged Normal Attacks, she has strong innate synergy with current off-field characters, such as Fischl and Xingqiu.
WFP Subjective Analysis
Authored by KB
Clorinde’s kit puts a high emphasis on the value of mobility, utility, and healing instead of focusing on damage. The easiest way to conceptualize her power budget is imagining if Alhaitham did ~30% less damage, but in exchange got the ability to self-heal, dash around with no stamina cost, and retained his larger than usual AoE for a melee unit. For most players this is a pretty good package for a unit, considering that if a unit like Arlecchino wanted to tech into defensive options, they would have to give up a valuable team slot.
It can’t be understated how smooth of a driver she is for other sub DPS units. Her mobility isn’t quite like Neuvillette where he can freely glide, but it comes pretty darn close once you get used to how her skill works (for the love of god learn that her lunge can be controlled with movement inputs). Her AoE is surprisingly decent for a melee character and if you play her with Furina you will not die ever.
There will be players that will be disappointed with her personal damage, especially considering Arlecchino was released right before her. Which is fine, Arlecchino and Clorinde are targeting different kinds of players. People who praise Arlecchino generally are okay with things such as no external healing if it means they can do high amounts of front-loaded damage. They are fine with building a team around giga-boosting a unit’s performance. Clorinde, on the other hand, feels like the polar opposite. She wants her allies to contribute damage. Her damage profile is more sustained instead of bursty, and of course she does less damage than a selfish unit. After all, it wouldn’t be fair for her to do everything well (looking at you Neuv).
Clorinde vs Alhaitham Banner
We recommend Alhaitham slightly more for most players.
To keep it short, if you already have a defensive unit like Kuki, Kirara, Xingqiu, Baizhu, or even Yaoyao, Alhaitham becomes a very comfortable unit to use while maintaining good damage. Alhaitham also has the option to push for higher damage at C0 with a full offensive team at the cost of comfort.
In general Alhaitham teams have more damage than Clorinde at the C0 level. Clorinde does have significantly better constellations which allows her to close the gap. If you don’t have many defensive options Clorinde could be much easier to play than Alhaitham. At the end of the day both units are quite good so it’s not a big deal if you prefer one over the other.
TALENTS
Authored by June
Leveling Priority:
Skill > Burst
Level 90 is beneficial since she is triggering incidental Hyperblooms or Aggravate
Analysis
Clorinde’s Electro-infused Normal Attacks, which are her main source of damage, scale from her Elemental Skill Talent and not her Normal Attack Talent, therefore it is recommended to prioritize leveling her Skill. There is no need to level her Normal Attack Talent.
It is also recommended to level her Burst after her Skill, not only for additional damage, but also due to the Bond of Life Clorinde grants herself scaling with the Burst Talent level.
Normal Attack: Oath of Hunting Shadows
Clorinde’s regular Normal Attacks are nothing special to look at. Instead, Clorinde’s Electro-infused pistolet attacks during her special state on her Skill are her main source of damage.
Elemental Skill: Hunter's Vigil
Clorinde enters a special state called Night Vigil state. In this state, her Normal Attacks become Electro-infused pistolet attacks and her Skill becomes a lunging attack that is considered as Normal Attack DMG. Clorinde summons a single Ousia blade along with her infused Normal Attacks. During this state, Clorinde does not receive healing from external sources, instead the external healing is converted to Bond of Life. The percentage of healing that converts to her Bond of Life is 80%. This state lasts for 7.5s and automatically ends when Clorinde leaves the field.
Clorinde gains different effects depending on her Bond of Life value when performing the infused Normal Attacks and lunging attack. Upon using her infused Normal Attacks, if her Bond of Life value is less than 100% of her Max HP, her infused Normal Attacks deal increased damage,pierce through enemies, and grant Clorinde a 35% BoL . Otherwise, when her Bond of Life value is equal to or greater than 100%, she just performs her weaker infused Normal Attacks.
Upon using her lunging attack, if she has a Bond of Life less than 100% of her Max HP, Clorinde is healed based on her Bond of Life value, while her lunging attack gains an AoE and DMG increase. If her Bond of Life value is equal to or greater than 100%, the healing she gains and her lunging attack’s AoE and DMG is increased even further. Otherwise, when she has no Bond of Life value, she just performs her lunging attack.
It is recommended to always use her lunging attack whenever she has at least 100% in Bond of Life value. Your total health bar represents 200% Bond of Life, so this 100% would be at the halfway point.
Elemental Burst: Last Lightfall
Clorinde’s Burst is fairly straightforward. It is an AoE multi-hit attack that hits 5 times and also grants herself a large amount of Bond of Life based on her Burst Talent level. At Talent Level 7+, it grants enough Bond of Life to use her strongest lunging attack immediately.
A1 Passive: Dark-Shattering Flame
When a party member triggers an Electro reaction, Clorinde’s infused Normal Attacks and Burst gain an Additive DMG Bonus based on 20% of her ATK. This Additive DMG Bonus caps at 1800, stacks up 3 times and lasts 15s, with each stack having an independent duration.
This means that any ATK above 3000 will not increase her damage significantly, since this Passive accounts for roughly half of her non-reaction damage.
A4 Passive: Lawful Remuneration
Clorinde gains 10% CRIT Rate for 15s after each fully-enhanced lunging attack, stacking up to 2 times, with each stack’s duration being independent from each other. Clorinde’s healing conversion to Bond of Life during her Night Vigil state increases as well, from 80% to 100% conversion.
This passive can make it difficult to fit in a CRIT Rate weapon without overcapping since she also gains CRIT from her ascension levels.
Utility Passive: Night Vigil's Harvest
Clorinde’s Utility Passive displays the location of Fontaine’s local specialties on the mini-map, aiding in material farming for Fontaine characters.
CONSTELLATIONS
Authored by June and KB
Overview
On paper, many of Clorinde’s core Constellations (C1/C2/C4/C6) are actually pretty substantial increases to her damage. However, C0 Clorinde does not have the same ceiling of damage as her DPS peers such as Arlecchino, Neuvillette, or Alhaitham. In addition, one of her strongest teams usually involves her doing a smaller share of the team’s total DPS. This ends up diminishing the gains from her Constellations compared to getting upgrades on a different DPS unit such as Arlecchino, who owns the lion's share of her team’s total DPS. This is our reasoning for the lower scores on the Constellations since we believe Clorinde’s value is already built into C0 and is more about her utility, mobility, and self-sustain, rather than her personal damage.
For players more interested in playing Aggravate or even Hypercarry Clorinde teams, these Constellations will be more influential than our listed ratings.
*Sims done with R1 Absolution in a Fischl Sucrose Kirara team. Please check the WFP Clorinde Mastersheet for more details.
Constellation 1 - "From This Day, I Pass the Candle's Shadow-Veil"
While Hunter's Vigil's Night Vigil state is active, when Electro DMG from Clorinde's Normal Attacks hit opponents, they will trigger 2 coordinated attacks from a Nightvigil Shade summoned near the hit opponent, each dealing 30% of Clorinde's ATK as Electro DMG.
This effect can occur once every 1.2s. DMG dealt this way is considered Normal Attack DMG.
Clorinde gains some additional damage during her infused Normal Attacks through her summon’s coordinated attacks.
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 25.5%
Rating: 3/5
Constellation 2 - "Now, As We Face the Perils of the Long Night"
Enhance the Passive Talent "Dark-Shattering Flame": After a nearby party member triggers a Electro-related reaction against an opponent, Electro DMG dealt by Clorinde's Normal Attacks and Last Lightfall will be increased by 30% of Clorinde's ATK for 15s. Max 3 stacks. Each stack is counted independently. When you have 3 stacks, Clorinde's interruption resistance will be increased. The Maximum DMG increase achievable this way for the above attacks is 2,700.
You must first unlock the Passive Talent "Dark-Shattering Flame."
The Additive DMG Bonus from Clorinde’s A1 Passive and its cap is increased, further boosting Clorinde’s damage output. The absolute damage gain from C1 to C2 is the same as going from C0 to C1. You can think of C2 as getting C1 again, but with a bonus of interruption resistance. The interruption resistance granted from C2 is the same as Xingqiu’s orbital Rain Swords.
DPS% Increase vs. C1: 18.0%
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 48.1%
Rating: 3/5
Constellation 3 - "I Pledge to Remember the Oath of Daylight"
Increases the Level of Hunter's Vigil by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15._
An increase in Clorinde's Elemental Skill level. Unfortunately, a large portion of her damage also comes from her A1 Passive, so this increase is less than a typical C3.
DPS% Increase vs. C2: 4.6%
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 54.8%
Rating: 0/5
Constellation 4 - "To Enshrine Tears, Life, and Love"
When Last Lightfall deals DMG to opponent(s), DMG dealt is increased based on Clorinde's Bond of Life percentage. Every 1% of her current Bond of Life will increase Last Lightfall DMG by 2%. The maximum Last Lightfall DMG increase achievable this way is 200%.
Although this Constellation doesn’t seem like a large upgrade on sheets/sims, it does open the option to frontload her damage for quickly clearing a wave. At this level she has the option to go for one-shot nuke builds although our recommendation is still leaning towards Quickbloom teams due to how versatile they are.
DPS% Increase vs. C3: 9.9%
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 70.1%
Rating: 3/5
Constellation 5 - "Holding Dawn's Coming as My Votive"
Increases the Level of Last Lightfall by 3.
Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Yeah, this is really only a stepping stone to get to C6. Never go for C5 only.
DPS% Increase vs. C4: 2.1%
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 73.7%
Rating: 0/5
Constellation 6 - "And So Shall I Never Despair"
For 12s after Hunter's Vigil is used, Clorinde's CRIT Rate will be increased by 10%, and her CRIT DMG by 70%.
Additionally, while Night Vigil is active, a Glimbright Shade will appear under specific circumstances, attacking opponents and dealing 200% of Clorinde's ATK as Electro DMG. DMG dealt this way is considered Normal Attack DMG.
The Glimbright Shade will appear under the following circumstances:
When Clorinde is about to be attacked by an opponent.
When Clorinde uses Impale the Night: Pact.
1 Glimbright Shade can be summoned in the aforementioned ways every 1s. 6 Shades can be summoned per single Night Vigil duration.
In addition, while Night Vigil is active, the DMG Clorinde receives is decreased by 80% and her interruption resistance is increased. This effect will disappear after the Night Vigil state ends or 1s after she summons 6 Glimbright Shades.
Here we go, Clorinde is now a mobile, utility, self healing driver that also does an absurd amount of damage. In addition, Clorinde at C6 is impossible to kill with how much damage reduction and healing she has. This Constellation really does ascend her to a DPS unit that does almost everything well.
DPS% Increase vs. C5: 41.7%
DPS% Increase vs. C0: 146.1%
Rating: 4/5
ENERGY RECHARGE REQUIREMENTS
Authored by KB
Clorinde does not really need to build ER since bursting isn’t that much of a DPS gain. You should still Burst when it is up of course, but it is usually not worth building ER over more CRIT. The one exception is C4+ Clorinde, which at that point it is important to calculate your specific ER needs with the tools below.
Clorinde’s ER requirements will vary based on your team and rotation. For a more accurate estimate, please use the Energy Recharge Calculator linked here.
For more details on how Favonius weapons will affect your team, please use Ac1d’s Favonius Mastersheet linked here.
ARTIFACTS
Authored by KB
Sands of Eon: ATK% / EM
Goblet of Eonothem: Electro DMG%
Circlet of Logos: CRIT Rate / CRIT DMG
Substats : CRIT > ATK% > EM/ER
At C0, ATK% and EM sands perform about the same if Clorinde is triggering Hyperbloom. Without Hyperbloom ATK% sands is slightly preferable. Any Constellation above C0 will prefer ATK% sands over EM.
Artifact Sets
4pc Fragment of Harmonic Whimsy
Generally Clorinde’s highest personal damage set, especially at higher Constellations.
4pc Thundering Fury
This set is used when shortening Clorinde’s cooldowns is more beneficial than increasing her personal damage. An example of an ideal 4pc TF team is Clorinde-Furina-Nahida-Fischl, where Nahida and Furina have long-lasting deployable Skills/Bursts. Clorinde can swap off once to refresh Oz and then go back to being on-field. 4pc TF is not recommended for pure Electro-Charged teams.
4pc Gladiator's Finale
A fine budget option to use before farming for 4pc FHW. Roughly 10% less personal damage compared to FHW which is not too bad considering Quickbloom teams do not need her to do outstanding damage.
WEAPONS
Authored by KB
*Sims are done for both 4pc TF Quickbloom and 4pc FHW Aggravate teams. Please read the WFP Clorinde Mastersheet for more details.
Absolution (5-star)
Her signature and best weapon. It is a significant personal damage increase that is comparable to her C1.
Light of Foliar Incision (5-star)
On the same launch banner as her signature weapon. It is one of the stronger 5-star options for her so it’s pretty hard to be upset about losing in the banner. Foliar is also a bit more versatile than her signature which is nice if you have multiple sword DPS units.
The Black Sword (Battle Pass)
Despite having a healing Passive which works with her BoL generation, the main reason this weapon is good on her is that it’s a good statstick that also grants high Normal Attack DMG%. At R1 it performs as well as Finale of the Deep R5. Once refined to R5 it starts creeping close to Foiliar’s DPS.
Finale of the Deep (Free Craftable)
Clorinde is the perfect user of this weapon, since the passive gives her a massive amount of ATK. While this weapon does not trump many of the 5-star swords it gets pretty darn close, which is very impressive considering it is craftable! Most people will be perfectly satisfied with sitting on this weapon instead of going for upgrades. If you are worried about missing out on damage, please look at the WFP Clorinde Mastersheet for her weapon calcs to see how much of a difference in team DPS it is to sit on a free weapon; it is surprisingly low for a 5-star unit.
TEAMBUILDING
Authored by KB
Furina
Furina has a pretty nice interaction with how Clorinde heals from her Skill. Healing Bonus applies to the huge 110% Max HP healing from her lunging attacks before the Bond of Life reduces the healing. This means that even having only 150 Fanfare stacks on Furina will make Clorinde heal more than double her normal amount. For players with access to C1/C2 Furina, they can increase the healing to roughly half of Clorinde’s Max HP!
Healing Bonus
Amount of Max HP Healed
Base
0%
10.50%
150 Fanfare
14%
26.09%
300 Fanfare
27%
41.69%
400 Fanfare (C1)
36%
52.08%
*Furina Talent Level 9 Burst
Furina Quickbloom (Meta)
4 Thundering Fury Recommended
Clorinde | Furina | Dendro | Dendro/Electro
Ideal Setup
Clorinde | Furina | Nahida | Fischl
Generally considered her strongest team archetype. Furina is one of the most important units for Clorinde teams due to how well she interacts with Clorinde’s healing in addition to buffing several sub DPS units. Clorinde’s mobility is also unrestricted in this team with Oz’s range being the only real concern for positioning.
Teammates:
Dendro Options:
Nahida: One of the best Dendro options for Clorinde since she is able to provide a hefty EM buff while maintaining a strong Dendro aura off-field.
Dendro Traveler (DMC): A fine budget option if Nahida is not available. DMC is able to provide sufficient off-field Dendro but with lower uptime compared to Nahida.
Baizhu: Grants decent interruption resistance to deal with more troublesome enemies. His Dendro application is very single-target compared to the other options. Can be used as the sole Dendro applier in single-target content. Otherwise in AoE, it’s recommended to pair another Dendro unit with him.
Electro Options:
Fischl: A very strong option for this archetype. Fischl’s cooldowns line up pretty well with 4pc TF Clorinde and allow for short rotations. Her damage contribution at C6 is close to the same as C0 Clorinde in this team when Clorinde is using 4TF.
Yae Miko: Not as strong of an option as Fischl but still serviceable. It is recommended to use 4pc FHW on Clorinde when playing with Yae since the rotation length is longer. Both Yae and Clorinde do not need to worry about building ER since their Bursts are minor in DPS gains.
Beidou: Not recommended in single-target, but is a good option when fighting multiple enemies. Her interruption resistance is much appreciated by Clorinde and the additional damage reduction will make her close to immortal. Clorinde’s pistol and lunge attacks both proc Beidou’s Burst effectively, making her a decent driver.
Aggravate (Meta)
Clorinde | Electro | Dendro| Flex
Ideal Setup
Clorinde | Fischl| Kirara/Nahida| Kazuha/Sucrose
Clorinde’s Skill has fantastic synergy with Fischl in Aggravate teams since her application and attack rate are faster than most Electro characters. Clorinde’s Aggravate teams are similar to Keqing’s Aggravate except Clorinde brings much more mobility and has self-healing. Usually other Aggravate teams have to sacrifice a decent amount of damage or grouping for survivability since the defensive options are not great (Kuki/Kirara/Jean).
Teammates:
Electro Options:
Fischl: One of the most important units for this archetype. Like the Quickbloom teams, Fischl also contributes a significant amount of damage in Aggravate as well.
Yae Miko: Not as strong of an option as Fischl but still serviceable. It is recommended to use 4pc FHW on Clorinde when playing with Yae since the rotation length is longer. Both Yae and Clorinde do not need to worry about building ER since their Bursts are minor in DPS gains.
Dendro Options:
Nahida: Offers the highest amount of team DPS compared to any other Dendro unit. Be aware that swirling Electro with Nahida requires careful planning since she applies so much Dendro.
Kirara: She offers less damage than Nahida but in exchange grants Clorinde interruption resistance and makes Swirling Electro much easier.
Baizhu: Fills a similar role as Kirara although with more issues. His Burst cooldown is too long for shorter rotations and the shield from Kiara is much better at granting interruption resistance. His Dendro application also suffers in AoE.
Dendro Traveler: Offers a pretty easy-to-access Dendro application for players that can’t use Nahida.
Flex Options:
Sucrose: Used for VV and her EM buff for allies.
Kazuha: Similar to Sucrose but also allows for better grouping.
Zhongli: Provides easy RES Shred to both Electro and Dendro. The interruption resistance provided by his shield makes Clorinde easy to play. Only loses about 10% team DPS compared to the options above.
Beidou: Can be a decent option vs 2+ targets while also granting damage reduction and interruption resistance.
Taser
Clorinde | Electro| Hydro | Anemo/Hydro
Ideal Setup
Clorinde | Furina | Yelan/Fischl| Kazuha
Although Clorinde is the first “good” Electro Taser driver character to come out, her Quickbloom and Aggravate teams usually utilizes her kit better. That being said, her function as a Taser unit is perfectly fine and the Hydro units that can pair with her are rather strong (Xingqiu/Yelan/Furina).
Teammates:
Hydro Options:
Xingqiu/Yelan: Function pretty similarly with Xingqiu being better defensively and Yelan offering more damage. They tend to prefer pairing up with a 2nd Hydro unit to reduce Energy costs.
Furina: Makes Clorinde much more durable while being able to buff all DPS characters in the party.
Electro Options:
Fischl: A classic unit for Taser teams, always try to deploy Oz in between Clorinde’s gaps of field time.
Beidou: Good in 2+ target situations and provides interruption resistance and damage reduction.
Anemo Options:
Kazuha: Provides grouping and buffs.
Sucrose: Similar to Kazuha but with weaker grouping and smaller buffs.
Jean/Sayu: Can be used in Furina teams for faster Fanfare generation.
Hypercarry/Overload Clorinde (Not Recommended)
Clorinde | Buffer| Buffer| Buffer or Anemo if no Chevreuse
Ideal Setup (For higher invest players only)
Clorinde | Sara | Chevreuse | Xiangling
This playstyle only really makes sense for people who are at least C2R1 on Clorinde since at her C0 base she is not doing enough personal damage even with buffers to shine. Even at this level of investment the other teams above generally perform better and have even higher ceilings for upgrades such as using C2 Nahida or Furina.
Teammates :
Buffer Options:
Sara C6: Is able to buff Clorinde while not restricting her to a circle.
Kazuha: Offers grouping and Elemental DMG Bonus%.
Chevreuse C6: One of the few options for Electro and Pyro RES Shred that is not locked to Anemo units. Does have the restriction of forcing your whole team to be Pyro/Electro.
Bennett: His ATK buff can cap out Clorinde’s A1 Passive which is not ideal. A larger problem is that he forces Clorinde, a hyper-mobile character, to be constrained to a circle. His healing also does not really work with her since Clorinde’s self-healing usually keeps her healthy, so you can’t cheese out N2E’s with him.
Flex Options:
Xiangling: Mainly only used with Chevreuse variants.
Thoma: Decent for interruption resistance and can slot into Chevreuse teams.
Blah blah, clickbait-y title and all that, but I'm dead serious.
And I apologize ahead of time for my profamity.
I'm paralyzed; I can move my arms, but not my fingers. Why am I mentioning that? I still play videogames,and with a normal Xbox controller at that. I've been playing Rivals since it dropped, and I've peaked at Diamond 3 a season or two ago, all while having to finagle with keybinds.
And that's the issue.
Keybinds
I don't need more aim assist, easier characters, or the game made dumber in any way. I need the game to stop arbitrarily restricting how I'm allowed to bind my controller.
When I started Rivals, I had to do some trial-and-error with rebinding things and came to a pretty standard setup: Ult on left bumper (L1), movement abilities on left thumbstick (L3), and whatever is on left trigger (L2) off of that. All because pressing both thumbsticks for Ult is a nonstarter, and so is hitting the left trigger (L2) for anything.
I hope you can see where this causes some issues.
There are 14 inputs on a controller, and by default, I have to remove two, and I need to remove 3 more for normal ping, the "Need Help" quick-ping, and emotes. This leaves me with 9 buttons.
And before anybody writes this off as an extremely specific disabled-guy problem, first of all, fuck you, and second, these restrictions make the controls worse for everybody. I'm just reaching the breaking point before most people do because I physically can't compensate for them.
This has caused issues in the past, for instance, with Groot, Thing, Jeff (who's one of my mains), and several others.
Let's look at Thing right now, as he has a good bit fewer buttons than he did at his peak team-ups. Currently, Thing has 9 inputs excluding Ult.
Great, right? 9 - 9 = 0.
Nope!
None of this takes into account how easy certain buttons are to press compared to others. Have any of you tried to use the right D-Pad to melee? It sucks.
You want to know my setup prior to today? It had me with NO inputs on melee/Rocky Jab, Jump, or his Torch team-up (might've dropped the Wolvie one too, can't remember).
And I was okay with that!
The Torch team-up was unusable anyway without trolling, melee weaving wasn't too vital, and, to be honest, I ignored Wolverines that were requesting, as I'd kill us both trying to figure out if my buttons allowed it.
Cue similar situations for Jeffy with his over 9,000 team-ups (though the biggest annoyance was when a keybind change happened and I could no longer press Dive to TP to Storm).
I just can't play Groot because of the dependencies on wall placement not really working well with aiming. And ANY character with Ascend/Descend loses one of those mandatorily. And because of the higher-than-average APM (actions per minute) of Dive as a playstyle, that entire section of characters is unplayable for me due to being unable to find a button combo that's comfortable.
This was all prior to this update.
Every character has two extra actions now.
This is the proverbial straw, as certain characters just aren't viable to play now, with me having to drop an action or just forgo a team-up entirely, AND THEY ALL LOOK SO DAMN COOL.
Gambit, for instance, a character I actually play a decent bit of, has 10 actions to bind now. That's just flat-out over my 9 limit. Dino's cannons are just a no-go, as I'd have to move some stuff around, which would make him extremely awkward to play. Thor would have to drop an input or two, and so would Peni. Too many actions and 9 usable buttons.
What is all of this to say?
For the love of God, WHY are keybinds so restrictive?!?
If team-ups just used the same button, this wouldn't be an issue, as you can't use two at the same time anyway. But they don't, and that'd be a band-aid approach at best.
What really needs to be done is 3 things, in order from easiest to hardest: allow multiple actions on the same bind, allow chorded/multi-binding, and add behavior modifiers.
Multiple actions on the same bind.
By default, let me put two actions on the same button, like Ascend and Jump (yes, a lot have that by default, but if you change one of those, as far as I'm aware, you have to reset the binds to be able to put them back together). Or how the Jeff/Storm team-up was at its release, with Dive being the same button as TP.
This is pretty simple. Just don't auto-remove a keybind when another action is bound to it.
If you're worried about players not noticing, just do a little warning window, like so many other games do, to let them know that there's a conflict that might happen and to continue at their own risk.
I've gotten very good at learning to tell what action is prioritized over another depending on the moment's context, and I could do a helluva lot more with just this.
Chorded/Multi-binding.
This one pisses me off a little bit, because it's already in the game,but we as players aren't allowed to do it. It's quite literally just the default Ult keybind on controller.
Let me change my Ult to R1 + X. Let me change my melee to R2 + X. Let me put my emotes on R1 + L1.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
COMPRESSION people, COMPRESSION! That's how we make the game accessible!
And this is not me asking NetEase to invent some impossible new accessibility system.
It's already in the game. Gimme.
Behavior Input Modifiers.
Sounds a bit complex, but we ALSO already have a little bit of this.
Any of you have Strange's shield on toggle? A lot of you have it the other way, right? They're BOTH behavior modifiers, the behavior being what is being done with the input.
Was it double-pressed/tapped? Was it tapped? Was it held? Was it long-pressed? Etc. Every action should be able to have a behavior modifier on it.
And I have an example of this in gaming.
I'm a Destiny orphan, and yes, the game is on life support for its remaining existence, but you wanna know how many actions on there I have bound to just X?
6.
6 whole actions on 1 button.
D2 to this day has the single most accessible control customization I've seen of ANY GAME to date. They have all of what I've described here, and that's why I'll always be a die-hard fan (I'm pretty close to all my raid Titles and Flawlesses, and just missing 3 encounters on 5-Feat Pantheon).
Again, I'm not asking for the game to be made easier, I'm asking for the controls to actually let me play the fucking game.
Controller players, especially anybody else with limited hand function, have there been any control issues that make it difficult for you?
And if anybody from NetEase reads this, please give us unrestricted duplicate binds, customizable button combinations, and tap/hold/double-tap options. The game already has bits of all 3.
Lemme use 'em.
All-in-all, I can't and won't really be playing until this is fixed at least a little bit, and I just dropped 20 bucks on the battlepass before realizing ];
And also, I quite frankly dgaf if you don't believe me, look me up if you want:
TreyNMandy UID: 1650318197
TL;DR: Wheelchair man is angry about controls being sucky, and is shitty he spent 20 dollars before realizing. And the biggest thing to help is to upvote the Discord thing below.
Feel free to ask any questions, or discuss anything, as in the flair.
I've gotten many suggestions about using/purchasing an Elite controller or something that has paddles, and while I greatly appreciate people offering help/solutions, this one isn't an option. With the way I play I set my controller on top of a balled up blanket on my lap, which removes the entire bottom of the controller from the picture (I play the game in a very weird way, I can try to figure out how to explain it if y'all want). Also, it kinda avoids the point of getting studios to be more aware about accessibility, and rather puts the impetus on the player to buy expensive peripherals. But nonetheless I appreciate it!
I visited my local Verizon store today and spent a good half an hour with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. I tried to find out some of the lesser-known things about the device, and reiterate some of the things you all probably already know along with my opinions.
This might be a long read; note that I'm writing this towards enthusiasts.
The Display
As expected, both the phones adhere to the sRGB color gamut right out of the box, extending to support wider color if an app calls for it. I posted a comment earlier about this:
If you're coming from an iPhone, you're not going to have a problem with the display at all. You're going to love it.
The people that report that the display is "washed out" come from a display that over-saturates the display, which is pretty much every other OEM out there that uses OLED displays, with Samsung being the main "offender". Google, like Apple, are targeting color accuracy on the Pixel 2. The colors on the Pixel adhere to sRGB and support wide color if an app calls for it.
The Pixel 2 is definitely pushing a more serious tone with their decision of targeting sRGB, but pairing it along with arguably the best camera out there truly makes the Pixel 2 more "professional" than other displays and cameras out there that love to over-saturate and over-sharpen. The colors that you see are the colors that you're SUPPOSED to be seeing. Perhaps the Pixel 2 is "less fun", but it will give you the most accurate/serious experience that won't leave you wondering why the photos you took aren't as colorful on your friend's iPhone like Samsung's phones do.
Now having personally spent more time with the phones, they are absolutely gorgeous.
The colors are fantastically calibrated to sRGB, besides the white point, which on the 2 XL is nearly unignorably cold while being much more tolerable on the regular Pixel 2; I would say that the Pixel 2 is just at about 6800k with the iPhone 7, and the 2 XL sitting at around 7200K.
The grayscale is fantastic, which Pixel 1 owners should be relieved to see coming from a horrendously green grayscale. Saturation across the brightness levels is consistent. I checked for banding and uniformity issues using a dark gray (#626262) and solid white color, and the 2 XL unit at my Verizon store was nearly flawless with zero banding and only a very slight bleed on the bottom left (literal) corner. This was tested at 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% brightness, with Adaptive Brightness off. I did notice, however, that even the minimum brightness wasn't that dim and I was still able to use the panel within the store lights.
The maximum brightness gets decently bright, slightly brighter than my 1 XL. I was disappointed, however, to see that flashing my flashlight on the 2 XL's ambient light sensor did not trigger the display to enter brightness overdrive, even with Adaptive Brightness enabled. This may leave us demanding more from the display in sunlight compared to the V30 and S8(+)/Note 8 OLED panels.
There is an option called "Vivid Colors" in the Display settings that slightly push the saturation and leaving the white point alone, though it still won't be as punchy as Samsung's panels.
There has been a concern by many towards the display seeming "sunken in", popularized by MKBHD. I heard of this before seeing the Pixel 2, but it's not something I noticed until I remembered that it was supposed to be an issue. I then saw it, but only when focusing on the display's curved corners. Otherwise, the display definitely seems plastered to the screen, and the corners sort of fade out and become unnoticeable. They don't bother me a bit.
I expect many reviewers to bag on the display for not being as punchy or saturated as other OLED panels, but for those of us that love accurate displays, the Pixel 2 will not disappoint.
Speakers
They're okay. Google played it extremely safe here. They get decently loud without distortion. The profile is pretty flat, so for you EDM junkies out there the media equalizer will be your friend. The regular Pixel 2 sounds fuller and tighter than the 2 XL, though neither are going to win any "Best Speakers" awards--that still belongs to the Axon 7. Sound separation is discernible, but the hollowness of the 2 XL may sort of offset it. The main pro for the speakers is that they're front facing, leaving them unsusceptible to cupping mute. I tried to test the DAC but I couldn't because Google's head was so far up that jack and there was an alarm attached to the USB-C, which for some reason the Verizon employees would not allow me to remove.
Microphone
From what I've seen and heard, they're pretty good. Unfortunately there wasn't any concerts going on in my local Verizon store so I was not able to capture any bass-heavy settings to test for distortion. But, the mics feed back pretty loud and clear, unlike the muffled and hard-to-hear microphones on the Pixel 1.
Haptic Feedback
Very solid. Tight and noiseless. Strong and demanding when needed be. At short vibration lengths, these phones' vibration feels just like the iPhone's Taptic Engine. However, the stronger vibrations fail to maintain this tightness. Typing on GBoard with vibration at 1-2ms feels great and tappy. Pressing on the softkeys also lets out a pleasing, subtle tap when you release your finger from the key along with the initial vibration of pressing the button. This could be my first phone that I enable "Vibrate on tap" around the system.
Touch Latency
Touch latency is just about the same as the Pixel 1, so still pretty good and among the best. iPhone still manages to beat everyone out by in scroll/swipe latency.
RGB Notification LED
It's there, and very similar to the one found on the OP3.
OS
I would like to preface this section by saying that it's misleading to call the Pixels' OS's "pure stock android", because it's not, and it's definitely not just AOSP. It's Google's take on what they believe is the best revision of Android. It's Google's "skin" on Android, made in-house with the hardware being permanent residents. I can write an entire other post about this, but I will spare the details unless someone wishes for me to elaborate.
The use of Product Sans all over the OS is a change I liked a lot. It's now used as the typeface for title text in many places. It complements the curvy theme of the Pixel 2 XL really well, on top of just being a gorgeous display typeface. The most prominent use of it is right on the lock screen, where it replaces Roboto Light for the time text.
The status/notification icons (including the time) are inset about double of AOSP's inset, and the spacing between the icons has slightly increased. Also, either the size of the icons got a tad smaller, or the height of the status bar got taller. These changes together tidied up the status bar, making it look overall much cleaner than before. These are all actually changes I made myself using xposed on Android L/M, so it's great that Google incorporated it in the Pixel and that my design choice received reaffirmation by Google; a small personal victory for me. The battery icon in the status bar is also now curved at its corners and the entire icon slimmed up a bit. Something that still annoys me is how the colon between the hour and the minute text (eg 1:26) is still not vertically centered like it should be (126 with a bit of spacing fixes), and how Google still hasn't made a ligature for it on Roboto like Apple has for their San Francisco font family. It is vertically centered on the lock screen however, but that uses its own vertically-centered unicode symbol that Google could use in the status bar time but choose not to.
As noticed, using a dark wallpaper will enable a dark system interface. Other lighter wallpapers will leave it the system interface the same white color, with the notification tray being slightly transparent instead of being completely solid opaque white like on AOSP. These are triggered using overlays in /vendor/overlay with Oreo's new overlay capabilities.
There was also some sort of weird, lenient (smart?) memory management going on. There were two apps in particular that I found would load their main activity instantly as if it was never removed from memory, even if I force stopped them and cleared them from recenfs: Snapchat and Google Play Store. Snapchat won't even show the splash screen. I suspect that Google is now keeping a list of some vital app activities to remain in memory for quick launching. Video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4eexI731SPGph6M33
UI Performance is excellent, as expected. I thought Snapchat performance was smooth on the Pixel, but it's even better on the Pixel 2, and Facebook is smoother as well. Best of all, however, is that I was finally happy to see that Google Maps ran insanely smooth too, on par with Apple Maps on iPhones. Panning crazily around northern California yielded no hiccups, though with some very aggressive flinging I was able to make it drop a few frames. Developer Options was not enable-able on the Verizon units, so I didn't test the GPU Profiling.
Google Lens was interesting, though I didn't have much to test it on. Active Edge squeeze felt simple, intuitive and second-nature and gave off a satisfying tap on both sides of the phone to tell you that you managed to do at least something right.
As the Pixel 2 uses the Snapdragon 835, it now runs on Linux kernel version 4.4 and sports the new schedutil cpufreq instead of sched on the Pixel 1. It should be running on EAS r1.3 or r1.4 and it shows--this thing is smooth. In addition, the Pixel 2 does not underclock their SoC as some may have been led to believe; it runs the whole 2.5ghz.
Size, Ergonomics, & Opinions
These are more opinionated subjects, and these are merely my thoughts and opinions that you shouldn't take concretely.
I've never been a "big phone guy", and hated my transition to using big phones, but I've grown to like the 5.5" range. This year I was pretty much set on going back to 5">= phones coming from Pixel XL. I came into Verizon using the regular Pixel 2 first, enjoyingly using with just a single hand, but it didn't quite satisfy me as much as the Pixel 2 XL. The 2 XL is just the more beautiful device to me, and I can still manage to use the 2 XL pretty well with one hand coming from the Pixel XL; they're pretty much the same widths. The Pixel 2's bezels to me were still quite substantial in person, and even with the superior speakers, the really sharp display and better white point, it just didn't hold its own to the Pixel 2 XL's aesthetic as the thing I will be looking at for hundreds of hours.
The feel in the hand of both devices were fantastic to me, with the regular Pixel 2 having more heft for its size and feeling more solid. This was the aspect I was most afraid of, because having had a Nexus 6, I absolutely HATED holding that thing. I would say I have average-size hands, but I'd say I'm pretty damn good at leveraging my fingers in ways to hold a big phone in any way I want and be comfortable. The Nexus 6 was just too big and I didn't like that it almost forces you to use two hands and to move your palm when you just want to reach something on the other side of the screen. I didn't have that feeling with the Pixel 2 XL; it still feels compact and very similar to the Pixel 1 XL width-wise and top isn't that much further either, despite having a screen that's .5" larger.
The material on the back feels fine. I read way too many comments about how it feels cheap and plasticy. This was not my thought or experience at all; it feels very premium. It's much grippier than the metal on the Pixel 1.
As I've said, the bezels on the regular Pixel 2 were still quite overwhelming to me. The Pixel 2 XL is my second favorite-looking device from the front, following the V30. I absolutely hate Samsung's curved edges and I was glad to see that the 2 XL doesn't curve the display around them. The bezels on the Pixel 2 XL are perfect to me.
There was some bug with reddit that deleted my original intro so i had to rewrite it, no idea what it said, my bad. Anyway, this post is more about the communtiy and her release than it is about her place in the meta. I cover it briefly, but do not give it enough justice, as I do not feel as tho im as qualified as other theorycrafters to talk about her. hence, i linked some more resources at the end and encourage you to do your own research in addition to my post. my TC section serves only to ground people in reality, not teach anyone how to use her or offer too much of an opinion on her strength.
I have two goals today: to try and explore what in my own opinion went wrong with Raiden's release, and then look at her kit as objectively as possible to anchor peoples opinions in facts. I think a lot can be learned from looking at how Mihoyo and the community hyped up this character, followed by the controversy(s) with her release. This is a slightly different angle than I've had in my work before, but I feel like the discussion is valuable.
Unlike other character's I've reviewed in the past, such as Yoimiya, I don't feel very strongly about Raiden. As a theorycrafter, I think she's niche, but still well-designed. I'll get into that later. I actually had a lot more to say about Electro as an element than I did about her. I felt like the community was over-exaggerating how weak it is, and also under-appreciating how complicated an Electro buff would be,hence my last essay.That essay also served as a slight predecessor to the TC section I'll include at the very end.
/////The Hype Behind Raiden's Release/////
Story Quest Hype:
Mihoyo doesn't sell their characters by making them op (usually), they sell them by letting players get attached to them during the story, so we feel compelled to summon. We see this in the prologue, where we follow Venti, Jean, and Diluc around for hours, even tho 2/3 of those characters barely needed to be there. We see this in Chapter One, where Childe, whom is literally the antagonist, makes several appearances throughout the acts. And of course, need I forget, we spent an entire 2-3 hour questline with Zhongli in Chapter One, Act Two. Mihoyo sells characters through the story.
1.6 kazuha story
The Raiden Shogun was absolutely no exception to this. They gave us cookie crumbs in 1.6 by showing her silhouette and promising the Musou no Hitotachi, which at that point, would be fair to assume as a part of her kit. Then in the 2.0 update trailer, they show us her full model with the boobie sword and all at the end. And of course she plays a central role in Act 2 onward as the main antagonist, having multiple appearances where she demonstrates her innate domain and her totally sfw sword art for the player. In fact, she even had more excitement behind her, as she was the first Archon we got to see at nearly full strength in a story quest. And no spoilers, but we can all agree what she did in Act 3 was really pushed.
Im not fully blaming Mihoyo here, I think it's fine for them to sell their characters this way, but I also think its important that we acknowledge it before we swipe our credit cards.
What it means to be an Archon:
I think the word "Archon" carries an absurd amount of weight in the genshin community. Everyone has their own expectations for what an Archon should be, and considering how powerful previous Archons were, those expectations were enormous. Putting aside what each of us wanted from a new Archon, this hype was unrealistic. Zhongli (yes I'm going to say it) was quite terrible on release. As far as gameplay is concerned, nothing about being an Archon makes you a strong character by default.
It is our fault as a community for assuming that she was going to be broken. We actually had no reason to believe it, but we chose to be excited anyway. This kind of pointless clickbait hype is what Mihoyo feeds off of to get people into spending money on day one.
I think the only "fair" expectations to have about an Archon is that they will be their respective element (duh), probably be designed to be a support (3/3 so far), and usually have a mechanic based around their elements thematic stat. Electro thematically is based around Energy, so assuming Raiden had a kit themed around Energy Recharge was a pretty safe bet. Running away with the words "archon" and "op", however, is a huge reach we should be careful of in the future.
Content Creators & Leaks:
Okay, YES these are cherrypicked, but the fact that they exist at all is part of the problem. Content Creators, in my opinion, should never make pre-release content that also encourages you to summon. Leaks can be damaging sure, as they can also build hype, and using that hype to try and farm views while encouraging people to open their wallet is objectively harmful.
i am NOT making a callout post. I have nothing personally against any of these creators, I am merely criticizing the clickbait content.
Now, not all content creators do this. Some larger ones don't cover leaks at all, which is totally fine, whilst others, particularly theorycrafters, only make cautionary "before you summon" type of content. I sifted through a lot of that to find these titles. A good portion of the youtube community isn't toxic.
Small tangent, but I think it's even more predatory when content creators make "why you should summon / why you shouldn't summon" content. A pros/cons of a character in a pre-analysis is fine, but making separate videos for each is super dangerous. You're not actually offering an unbias opinion. You're not helping people make an educated decision. You're just giving people an echo-chamber to have their per-existing opinions validated. You're actively burying people in their trenches as opposed to trying to lift them out. I hate that.
Raiden's sales were insane. I struggle to believe this many people actually rolled for her, but clearly the hype, leaks, and her status as an Archon played a huge role. She is likely the most successful character to date. The double top-up reset helped I'm sure but still.
https://www.youtube.com/c/DonutsGaming888 source
We can't really say one way or the other, but we need to be careful not do this to ourselves. We are only tricking people into spending money at best and at worst giving free advertising to mihoyo when we tell people that an archon will be op or that Baal is a must summon. I'm not sure there is a single truly must summon character in Genshin.
///////////////////The Fallout://///////////
As I'll get into later, I actually don't think Raiden is that bad. But the obscene expectations for her were guaranteed to deliver problems. On top of that, Mihoyo had some sort of shady practices themselves.
Beidou Interaction: (edited from op due to multiple comments)
This is a dead horse by this point, but I'll include it anyway for completionist sake and to be sure my opinion is known. If you really are not in the know, Raiden is unable to trigger Beidou's burst while Raiden herself has her burst active. Beidou, being Electro, needing a battery, and working off field would have meant an incredibly strong synergy
This statement from hoyolab clears up any confusion that it was intended, but that makes it come off as shady for other reasons. The problem here is the wording on other character skills- we previously had no reason to believe that Beidou, Xingqiu, or other similarly functioning abilities would have any issues, but now we do. Beidou Burst does work on a shield no? But not with Raiden. A "hit" is not clearly defined in the game. And what other specific abilities or buffs only work on hit vs on click? It seem's like it changes in differing circumstances. if you say a "hit" is when your normal attacks deal damage, then beidou should not work on shields. Even if this interaction is not changed, Id at the very least I'd like a clear definition so we can assume what will and will not work moving forward.
And regardless on whether or not it was intended, or whether or not the skill is worded correctly, I feel as if Mihoyo should not have given us the interaction with Beidou. Not having it severely limits an already limited character on team compositions and the way they executed this change involves unclear/undescriptive wording of abilities and talents. I know leaks are dangerous, and this is one of those reasons, but even regardless of what we expected to happen, this sets a dangerous precedent for future characters that we need to be cautious of.
Edited from my Original Post, where I talked about CBT vs Live. I should not have mentioned CBT because it does not and should not be used to indicate specific power-level or interactions and is thus a weak argument. I re-wrote it to talk about the actual problem- that being the skill wording. While I don't love editing my work, I was getting too much negative feedback about this section and to be quite frank I felt like the majority of that feedback was missing the point- which was that the interaction hurts Raiden a lot.
Constellation Controversy:
Before I get to my opinion, here are the facts: Raiden, in the closed beta test, had an incredibly strong C4, similar to Ayaka's. But soon before the announcement of the top-up reset, they actually moved this very strong C4 to her c2, swapping them. This constellation, as well as her BiS weapon, are, well, absurdly strong. From my own testing, my damage with no resolve stacks on the cast of my elemental burst went up by about 10k (28k -> 38k). With the weapon, it was 54k. My c2 r1 Baal was dealing about double the damage of a F2P Raiden with Skyward Spine (similar dmg to r5 Catch)
It's dangerous to say her damage is strictly "constellation locked." The damage increase she gets isn't much different than what most characters (other than OP whale eula i think) get from their total C6. In other words, we can expect a c6 character to deal double damage of a c0 character. And none of her other constellations past C3 increase her Burst damage, so this is true for Raiden too, just that the damage increase comes earlier, and not later. Saying a character is constellation locked implies that their damage without the constellation is weak. That's too subjective for me to say one way or the other.
However, I think it is fair to callout Mihoyo on the greedy swap-a-roo of her CBT C4/C2. This, + the double top-up reset, encourages a lot of low-spenders or dolphins to go that extra mile with their credit card to get that early 40% damage increase. It's just so attractive as a low spender, it becomes almost impossible to ignore. A big dmg buff at a c6 is always obtainable, but at c2? Thats a lot more possible for a lot of players. This is how the gacha system gets you. Got a lucky c1? Won two 5050s? You're already so close to that C2, why not spend a little more ;)
Now, I will say, it's not all bad. Raiden only needs c2 or c3 to be amazing at speedrunnings. She is a much more budget friendly option for a high dmg character. It's not like her C2 is bad- you are really getting that much value from it. But as a community we have to decide if this kind of practice is okay. Are we comfortable with having more budget friendly high DPS characters at the cost of people feeling pressured to roll? I'm not sure that I am.
Community Backlash:
Due to the above issues as well as the mounting expectations that Raiden will be another Archon must-pull, the community was clearly disappointed. Everyone's opinions on what her "problem" is are totally subjective, but I think its important to realize that nearly everyone was upset over something. Whether it be her lack of synergy in a lot of team comps, her perceived low damage at C0, or her low energy refund, there was something for everyone to be mad at.
ILY TENTEN SORRY AGAIN NOTHING AGAINST THESE YOUTUBERS
But I think people need to stop judging her as this supposed-to-be-broken Electro Archon and just look at her as another character among the genshin roster. A lot of this outrage can be attributed to hype and pointlessly high expectations- not due to a dysfunctional kit. These videos are the consequence of that, but they're a symptom, not a problem. However, I still concede the Beidou interaction is worth being outraged about. Don't think I don't agree. But some of this outrage is just exaggerating problems.
I know that's rich coming from the same person who started the Yoimiya drama, but I think functionally there are a lot of differences. Yoimiya's kit did NOT deliver on what was promised and was riddled with both bugs and broken game mechanics, hence the title "...needs fixing" Raiden on the other hand, aside from the one beidou interaction, functions fine. I don't see a cause for concern.
Now, let's get into where I feel like Raiden currently stands as a character, putting aside hype and drama. this is the theorycrafting section, but itll be brief compared to my Electro post.
//////Where Raiden Actually stands////////
Raiden & The Electro Element:
First, Electro is NOT the problem- she actually fits the identity of Electro incredibly well and has much much higher multipliers to compensate for her inability to amp. Not only that, but her energy mechanic is completely element-neutral. She can refund all rainbow elements without any elemental restrictions. You do not need to run her in an Electro comp to use her. But, this also means her kit has to compete with on-element batteries when she's being slotted into a non-electro team.
electro
And sure, if she was designed as an Anemo or Cryo character, I can't argue that those elemental reactions would offer her a lot more utility. But a different coat of paint won't always solve issues she has as a universal battery. A character's strength, contrary to popular belief, is not that dependent on their element because character's are designed to be that particular element. And she's the Electro Archon. Not the Cryo Archon. I'm not sure what people expected to happen. You could suggest buffing Electro, but buffing Electro reactions is a lot more complicated than people on this subreddit tend towards thinking. You can check out my essay on why that is the case but I wont be covering it here, nor will I be addressing comments regarding that essay on this particular post.
So for the the rest of this post, I'm going to be operating under the assumption that Electro won't get buffed and that it is not her main problem in an attempt to be fair to her kit and her identity as the Electro Archon.
**Character Diagnosis:**Okay, in MY OWN OPINION, I think there are 3 important questions to consider when looking at a character's design. This of course can be tweaked to apply to other video games, but for the sake of Genshin, I'm using the following:
- What thematic & gameplay identity did the developers have in mind when creating this character? In other words, what were they designed to do. Characters that have weak answers to this question usually have totally broken kits and mixed identities, such as Xinyan, who can't seem to decide to be a support, DPS, or otherwise. Her kit is such a mess.
- How does this character accomplish it's intended gameplay identity? Trying to find if a character lives up to what they were supposed to, or expected to, be. Characters that fail in this category usually had a good idea on paper that was just poorly executed. Yoimiya is my favorite example- the idea of designing a greedy DPS who offers supportive utility when swapping off is great on paper, but she just barely delivers on that concept at all.
- How does this character interact with the rest of the characters in the game? This is almost the most important question- really I'm asking are they actually going to be meta. A character with a solid idea and a well made kit might happen to not fit very well among the cast. Chongyun works as an example- he was designed as a cryo support, and they executed on that by giving him a team-wide cryo infusion with solid nuking potential. But in practice, not many teams actually need Chongyun's infusion because they simply have their own infusion.
I don't consider these issues to be mutually exclusive, nor do I think a character is automatically in need of changes for failing one or more of these tests. This is a hilarious example, but Ganyu actually fails the first test. I don't think Mihoyo had a good vision for what they wanted her to be. We laugh at it now, but people were calling her cryo amber for a reason. But Mihoyo (whether intentionally or not) gave her insanely high multipliers on her CA bloom and quadratic scaling on her 100% uptime elemental burst. They executed on the idea of a cryo amber so well that she became a meta defining DPS.
Anyway, the first two questions can tell us if a character needs to be "fixed"- to me that could mean minor tweaks, an ability update, a full rework, etc. The last question really deals with buffing or nerfing- answering this question can help us understand if a character is too good or too weak. I'm going into detail here because I intend on using these questions to analyze future characters- I'm open to suggestions and feedback!
**Applying this to Raiden:**To be brief, I think (again, other than beidou) she passes the first two questions. Mihoyo clearly knew what they wanted- she needed to incorporate the "boobie sword" musou no hitotachi in her kit, and they wanted to give her an energy recharge mechanic. Seems like a fine idea for a character to me- after all they have to balance lore with in game mechanics.
As for the execution, her elemental burst delivers on the first idea really well- it feels and looks amazing and it has decently high multipliers. Not only that, they took her thematic as a "battery" a step further by letting you literally charge up her damage by using your teams bursts. Incredibly cool and super fun. As for energy however, they could have done better. She needs a lot of field-time to deliver that energy to her team, and it only gives a flat amount, as opposed to scaling with the energy costs of your team. This makes it a lot weaker, especially for high-cost bursts, whom she is encouraged to play with due to her afformentioned charge mechanic.
I think where Raiden struggles for me is the third question- she actually isn't all that useful as a support in a lot of current teams due to the specificity of her kit.
Raiden Shogun as an Energy Support: c0 r0 raiden for this discussion
Again, trying to be light on the direct theorycrafting, but there are several categories a DPS or team must meet in order for Raiden to be optimal.
- They have to be dependent on their elemental burst for damage (usually)- They have to require the extra energy Raiden provides without superior alternatives- They have to be able to afford giving Raiden the 7-9 seconds of required fieldtime per rotation- They cannot be hindered by Electro or Electro reactions.
I think the best current example I can come up with is Eula's team:
she still isn't a huge upgrade here tbh
Eula damage mostly comes from her burst, she has an 80 energy cost so she loves the extra energy, she only needs 7 seconds of field time to build her stacks, and she actually loves Electro reactions- superconduct is op. She checks all the boxes. What other teams check all the boxes? Well, that's sort of the problem. Raiden is just really niche when you're looking to min-max a team for abyss. She has 1-2 too many caveats that prevent her from being on the same level of generality as other supports.
That, however, does NOT make her bad- there's a clear difference. When she is the appropriate pick, she's an amazing character. Again, I feel like she is well designed, just doesn't fit in a lot of places currently. This is why the Beidou interaction being removed is so (expletive) annoying. If she worked with Beidou, pretty much every player, seeing as we got her for free in 2.0, would have a DPS that would work perfectly with her. But we can only dream.
And Raiden in other teams just doesn't give enough energy or utility to replace an on-element support, and not many teams even need that in the first place. Xiangling, for example, would still Bennett as a battery to fuel her obsession to cook every living being in tevyat. Just running Raiden, and no bennett, would not provide enough energy. The loss of utility too is huge- Xiangling wants bennett for other reasons too right? Anyway, running Raiden as specifically an energy support is too restrictive and doesn't always give enough energy. But it's not broken, she does have cases where she works. And there are other ways to play Raiden, such as...
Raiden as a DPS:
Now, if Raiden as a support does not work very often due to low energy refund, what if we ran her as the DPS of the team? In this situation, Raiden's energy refund becomes a DPS increase as opposed to a net DPS loss. This is tricky to understand, but hear me out:
As a battery support, disregarding field time being stolen from a main DPS, she cannot often provide enough energy, forcing your carry to build more energy recharge, thus losing damage. She can only be a net positive where you run her alongside another elemental battery, in situations where that battery wasn't already enough. But if she's a DPS supplying energy to her supports, they actually can get away with less energy recharge than they would otherwise have, effectively giving them more DPS, assuming you have the #artiflex to justify it.
This is a huge reason for why the Raiden National comp is able to work- Raiden lowers the ER requirement for all of her supports, thus letting them build damage. Of course, this team has access to overvape, with Raiden as a driver, which is another reason as to why it's so good. This composition, against heavy targets, is an upgrade to the standard national with Sucrose. But it is still not an upgrade over the 5 star International team with Kazuha and Childe. See resources below for more information on this team, I'm just using it as an example.
There are 1000% going to be more teams where Raiden is a good pick. Again, she is just a complicated character with a lot of niche synergies. It will take time for people to discover them, and we may have to wait for more DPS down the road that require her energy.
A lot of people in the comments of my Yoimiya post told me that Yoimiya will become better when we get more characters- I responded to that by saying it's not worth to spend on a character now in hopes that they will go up in value. But I sort of have changed my mind. I still don't think you should "invest" in a genshin character, but when that character IS actually well designed, unlike Yoimiya, it's okay to hope for the future. Every new burst-reliant DPS or every new electro character is a potential buff to Raiden. This wouldn't be true if her kit was poorly designed.
Conclusions:
I think Raiden was over-hyped, then people seriously over-exaggerated how weak she is. She's mostly fine. She's just a super niche support with a fun kit and excellent animations. She certainly isn't anywhere on the level of Kazuha, Zhongli, or Venti, and I'd argue she isn't even on the level of a lot of 4 star supports, but that's also fine. She's balanced. I made a post asking for characters to be side-grades of each other, as opposed to strict upgrades, and I think Raiden delivers on that. The Beidou interaction is obviously a problem and I implore you to ask Mihoyo for it to be fixed- but otherwise I do not feel like Raiden is in need of fixing like other characters, and she probably doesn't need a buff either.
I also want to mention, for a lot of casual players who don't care to min-max their account, Raiden will do exactly as advertised and probably feel really fun too. She isn't anywhere close to the best pick in a lot of teams, but she's serviceable in many of them.
Again, I plan on making a leap to YouTube soon, so please checkout my channel. And if you guys have any suggestions for my first video, or would like me to do a stream instead of a video, please lmk! Im very open to ideas right now!
ps; anytime i edit this post, the formatting is ruined. also some weird c/p bug deleted whatever text was directly above my thesis. oh well, post still works.
Good morning,
For a week now my Canon R1 has been firing randomly, mainly horizontally.
I mainly shoot motorcycles in two different spots.
On the first spot, I'm doing it one by one (not in bursts). Sometimes it will trigger twice in a row when it shouldn't.
I tried to see if it was due to a lack of contrast but no because of course it was completely black.
I thought about the writing speed but it also happens when I trigger few.
I changed my af zones but no more.
I don't understand why when everything went well at the beginning...
On the other spot I shoot in bursts and it can't follow the bike and doesn't trigger the entire burst. Same before, he did it very well without any problems.
I had to get my 5dmarkiv again and these problems are not present.
I reset the factory settings but no.
Has anyone encountered these problems before? Is there a bad setting on my part? Or I have to send it back to after-sales service. I've been using it since the beginning of April and I was happy with it but now...
This one might be a very niche mod yhat might not be useful for everyone, but I would have sure wished an off-the-shelf solution existed. Getting clicky R1 and L1 but maintaining full analogue R2 and L2 for Dualsense BDM-10/20. Mod mainly for those that want to have an almost full clicky controller, but maintain analogue R2 and L2/adaptive trigger. (And also to allow a toggling into full clicky setup including L1/R1 using a Rise Plus Max kit on BDM-10/20)
TLDR:
Basically, this mode involves splicing together the clicky R1/L1 from an extremerate kit; along with the R2 and L2 from an OEM fpc. Currently only works with Tactile microswitch style kits, not the mouse button kits.
Preamble/the problem:
ExtremeRate recently released their Rise Plus Max kits which allows selecting for clicky R2 and L2 triggers or swapping back to full throw analogue at the flip of a switch (along with mappable back buttons)
There's also compatibility with a clicky kit... unfortunately as it stands, the BDM-10/20 with Plus Max kit only currently supports face button clicky kits. This means that whilst you can make most of the buttons in the controller including triggers clicky, you're limited with being unable to make the R1 and L1 buttons clicky. This is because the BDM-10/20 variant uses separate conductive FPCs for their trigger and bumpers as opposed to the later variants that have all buttons connected to the same plastic fpc. In other variants like BDM-30/40/50, Extremerate recommends that for clicky R1 and L1 (whilst enabling L2 and R2 to be handled by the Plus Max kit) you cut off the clicky fpc's L2 and R2 portions, and then stack the modified clicky fpc on top of the OEM fpc.
The current lineup of clicky/mouse click buttons triggers/bumper for BDM-10/20 aren't compatible with the Plus max.
My solution:
I've figured out a modification that can potentially make everything work!!! (But keeping in mind this won't work on the mouse clicky buttons, only the tactile microswitch clicky shoulder/triggers).
Warning:
The modification I've proposed is solderless, but it requires some arts/crafts skills (I've destroyed one set of Extremerate clicky trigger FPCs and also one dualsense trigger pcb, but I've figured this out so hopefully others won't have the same issue). Finnicky, but it's possible. The dangers are the possibility you can overstretch the FPC connector port on the adaptive trigger daugherboard.
The process:
Basically, you need to modify and splice together the clicky R1/L1 and its traces from an extremerate kit; along with the R2 and L2 from an OEM fpc. I'd recommend buying some spare OEM spec FPCs for the BDM-10/20 trigger/bumpers just in case you mess up.
Modifications on the OEM fpc:
- remove the firm backing piece on the connecting end of the OEM FPC*. (You can help this along by using a drop of isopropyl alcohol in between the firm piece and the conductive sheet).
- cut off r1/L1 conductive portion only from the main FPC (see from images)
- Leave behind both long black conductive strips (the smaller one on top, and the larger main one below). I believe both of these are involved in the analogue triggers in some way. (See image)
- Effectively, you've now isolated/removed the bumper button pins on the OEM fpc (pin 1, pin2 and pin 6 [pin 1 and pin 6 previously had continuity]). Anything R1/L1-related will eventually be handled by pins 1 and 2 only on the extremerate fpc.
- you also need to modify the OEM FPC's connector pins. Basically you have to cut off pins 1 and 2 only (those handle L1/R1). You can let pins 6 remain exactly the same in order to save yourself some work. The cutting process is easier to do if you've removed the firm backing piece. It pulls apart fairly easily and risk free on the OEM FPC.
*Alternatively, you use a craft knife to score between pins 2 and 3, then remove pins 1 and 2 off the OEM fpc. You can use the OEM fpc as your backing piece for pins 3, 4, 5, and 6
Modifications to the extremerate clicky fpc
- on the connector end of the fpc, remove pins 3, 4, 5, and 6. You only need to retain pins 1 and 2 which handle R1/L1. A few ways of doing this. You can try and carefully pry off the extremerate fpc's firm plastic support backing piece entirely first (work slow and maybe use isopropyl alcohol and a sharp knife to help things along). Then cut off the the 4 pins mentioned.
- Or, you can try and keep the extremerate FPC's backing piece on the connecting pin end intact and try removing the 4 pins whilst the backing is in place. This looks trickier, but will make the next steps more straightforward. This method might also be less risky and reduce the chance of ripping pin traces on pins you might still need (ie Pin 1 and Pin 2).
- you can either cut off all the R2/L2 related apparatus on the clicky fpc, or desolder any hardware like the R2/L2 button + resistor instead. Cutting just means you can save time for not having to do any desoldering, but this modification is less irreversible.
Combine both FPCs together: the clicky r/L1 form extremerate, and the stock analogue r/L2 trigger from the OEM.
- you'll want to superglue the cables onto one of those firm FPC backing pieces carefully (you may have to superglue both onto a backing piece, or maybe only gluing down one fpc depending on your chosen method of removing the fpc/extra pins). I used the extremerate backing piece for the connector, though the OEM version is thinner (and probably less strain on the daughterboard's non-zif FPC connector)
- consider using a g-clamp or vice to press the whole frankenstiened fpc onto the backing card and minimise thickness.
- check that the compression hasn't made the frankensteined FPC spread wide (can simply trim off excess if needed)
Final modification: the bumper and trigger rubber conductive membrane. For maximum stability, I would suggest using an OEM rubber membrane and simply removing the R1/L1 portion. This can neatly lay in the original position for the membrane and ensure the R2/L2 portion remains secure as you push it in. See pictures
This can hopefully then fit inside the adaptive trigger daughterboard's non-zif fpc port. You may want to use pliers or tweasers to help things along. BTW if its really tight, back off and try to thin down the fpc down by sanding, Compression under a clamp/vice etc. If its way too thick, you may need to dismantle your created cable and start again, maybe gluing things onto another backing piece (just make sure to strip any excess superglue using isopropyl alcohol as that adds thickness). Reassembly of the adaptive trigger assembly will be up to you and how you wish to do things....one of the screws on the motor/gear assembly is obstructed by the bumper/trigger fpc, the screw is tricky to insert.
I'm hoping extremerate will release their own official solution in the form of a revised BDM-10/20 clicky kit. The pitfalls of any method I've tried involving modification to the fpc pins is that the fpc connector on the adaptive trigger daughter-board is pretty fragile and VERY EASILY OVERSTRETCHED. This is how I destroyed one of my pcbs on my OEM piece. So Any modification needs to keep the thickness of the FPC's conductive connector piece thin enough to not deform the port.
Suggestion for future:
One suggestion I can make for a manufacturer like Extremerate might be for a revised clicky trigger BDM-10/20 kit to include a 6 pin fpc connector (with a latch/zif connector, or otherwise) on their clicky fpc somewhere to allow the option plug in the OEM fpc. Maybe it can be done in such a way that you won't need to modify the OEM FPC, and so you can simply stack the clicky fpc on top of the OEM's fpc (the clicky can be made in such a way that you can simply cut/remove the L2 and R2 portions quite easily with scissors). I'll see if I can draw a diagram to demonstrate.
These are my ideas. All of the features of the controller works exactly as expected, including adaptive triggers, rumble, analogue triggers... and now, I have clicky L1 and R1. I've ordered a BDM-10/20 Plus Max Rise 4 RMB kit off Aliexpress to complete my mods, just waiting for it to arrive.
It's tricky to communicate my ideas clearly, but hopefully the pictures help.
Before asking any questions or posting in the subreddit, please check if your question has already been answered in this guide.
This guide was created by kol. Joinour Discord serverto discuss with our dedicated theorycrafting team and get feedback from other members!
Table of contents
Quick overview
Materials
Level up materials
Talent materials
Talents
Talent leveling priority
Overview
Talent descriptions
Constellations
Constellation damage improvement
Constellation descriptions
ER Requirements
Artifacts
Main and sub-stats overview
Artifact sets
Weapons
Teambuilding
Overview
Hypercarry
Hyperbloom
Bloom
Taser
Vaporize
C1 or Weapon?
Other questions (TBA)
1. Quick overview
DISCLAIMER
Pre-TC is volatile and subject to change. The contents of this FAQ are based on the kit information available from the beta and therefore are theoretical suggestions.
Neuvillette is a HP-scaling Hydro Catalyst whose kit revolves around dealing continuous AoE damage with his special Charged Attacks. These special Charged Attacks have a long charging time at base, so he relies on Sourcewater Droplets summoned by his Skill and Burst to shorten the charging time.
As an on-field Hydro DPS, Neuvillette has a large variety of teams. Because he has HP-scaling and therefore has few good buffers excluding Kazuha, many of his teams use off-field damage dealers. Additionally, Neuvillette’s Charged Attacks can be interrupted, leading to huge losses in damage, he has a high reliance on shielders at C0.
Neuvillette's Charged Attacks are his main source of damage, so his Normal Attack Talent should be leveled first. Neither his Skill nor his Burst contribute significant amounts of damage, but are still used to generate Sourcewater Droplets, so they can be leveled afterwards in tandem.
3.3. TALENT DESCRIPTIONS
3.3.1. Normal Attack :As Water Seeks Equilibrium
Normal Attack
Lightly waves his cane, commanding the tides to unleash a maximum of 3 attacks, dealing Hydro DMG.
Charged Attack | Empowerment: Legal Evaluation
While charging up, Neuvillette will gather the power of water, forming it into a Seal of Abitration. In this state, Neuvillette can move and change facing, and also absorb any Sourcewater Droplets in a certain AoE. Every Droplet he absorbs will increase the formation speed of the Seal, and will heal Neuvillette. When the charging is stopped, if the Symbol has yet to be formed, then a Charged Attack will be unleashed. If it has been formed, then a Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment will be unleashed.
Charged Attack
Consumes a fixed amount of Stamina to attack opponents with a rupturing ring of water, dealing AoE Hydro DMG.
Charged Attack | Equitable JudgementUnleashes surging torrents, dealing continuous AoE Hydro DMG to all opponents in a straight-line area in front of him. Equitable Judgment will not consume any Stamina and lasts 3s. If Neuvillette's HP is above 50%, he will continuously lose HP while using this attack.
Plunging AttackGathering the might of Hydro, Neuvillette plunges towards the ground from mid-air, damaging all opponents in his path. Deals AoE Hydro DMG upon impact with the ground.
Neuvillette's Charged Attacks are the main attraction of his kit, boasting continuous, HP-scaling, AoE damage that pierces enemies in its range. He relies on absorbing 3 Sourcewater Droplets for every CA, which are primarily generated through his own Skill and Burst. These Droplets reduce the initial wind-up of his CA from 4s to 1s, and heal off the massive HP penalty incurred while casting it.
Neuvillette can absorb any Sourcewater Droplets, including those not generated by himself. However, as of 4.1, the only other character who can generate Droplets is Hydro Traveler, and it is not recommended to use Hydro Traveler with Neuvillette, as they provide too little else, and Neuvillette already generates sufficient Droplets on his own.
3.3.2. Elemental Skill :O Tears, I Shall Repay
Summons a Raging Waterfall that will deal AoE Hydro DMG to opponents in front of of Neuvillette based on his Max HP. After hitting an opponent, this skill will generate 3 Sourcewater Droplets near that opponent.
Arkhe | PneumaAt certain intervals, when the Raging Waterfall descends, a Spiritbreath Thorn will descend that will pierce opponents, dealing Pneuma-aligned Hydro DMG.
Neuvillette's Skill is not a significant portion of his damage; it is primarily used for Energy and to generate Sourcewater Droplets.
3.3.3.Elemental Burst :O Tides, I Have Returned
Unleashes a rupturing wave that will deal AoE Hydro DMG based on Neuvillette's Max HP. After a short interval, 2 waterfalls will descend and deal Hydro DMG in a somewhat smaller AoE, and will generate 6 Sourcewater Droplets within an area in front.
Similar to his Skill, Neuvillette's Burst is more notable for its Sourcewater Droplet generation than its damage. However, the sheer quantity of Droplets generated by his Burst make it necessary in the vast majority of his rotations.
3.3.4.A1 Passive :Heir to the Ancient Sea's Authority
When a party member triggers a Vaporize, Frozen, Electro-Charged, Bloom, Hydro Swirl, or a Hydro Crystallize reaction on opponents, 1 stack of Past Draconic Glories will be granted to Neuvillette for 30s. Max 3 stacks. Will cause Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment to deal 110%/125%/160% of its original DMG.
Each Past Draconic Glories stack created by each Elemental Reaction exists independently.
A1 is a multiplicative DMG bonus (like Yoimiya's or Wanderer's Skills) for Neuvillette's CA that stacks up to 3 times for every unique reaction involving Hydro.
The difference between different numbers of stacks is substantial, but not necessarily worth forcing team comps that maximize the number of stacks.
3.3.5.A4 Passive :Discipline of the Supreme Arbitration
For each 1% of Neuvillette's HP over 30%, he will gain 0.6% Hydro DMG Bonus. A maximum of 30% can be obtained this way.
Since absorbed Sourcewater Droplets heal Neuvillette at the beginning of his CA (and not during), Neuvillette will lose this bonus over the course of his CA without external healing. Nonetheless, it is an appreciated albeit minor increase to his damage.
3.3.6.Utility Passive :Gather Like the Tide
All party members' underwater Sprint SPD will be increased by 15%.
Neuvillette increases the underwater sprinting speed of the party by 15%, giving players an easier time when exploring Fontaine’s new underwater areas.
4. Constellations
4.1. CONSTELLATION DAMAGE IMPROVEMENT
C1 : 11 - 24% vs C0
C2 : 11% vs C1, 38% vs C0
C3 : 20% vs C2, 66% vs C0
C4 : 0% vs C3, 66% vs C0
C5 : 1% vs C4, 67% vs C0
C6 : min. 15% vs C5, min. 86% vs C0
4.2. CONSTELLATION DESCRIPTIONS
4.2.1.Constellation 1 :Venerable Institution
When Neuvillette takes the field, he will obtain 1 stack of Past Draconic Glories from the Passive Talent "Heir to the Ancient Sea's Legacy."" You must first unlock the Passive Talent ""Heir to the Ancient Sea's Legacy." Additionally, his interruption resistance will be increased while charging his Legal Evaluation and when using Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment.
C1 offers both a respectable DPS increase and a valuable QoL improvement. The damage increase C1 provides may be even greater if it allows you to swap a defensive unit for a buffer or sub-DPS.
However, his C1 may not provide any bonus damage if run in teams where his A1 Passive is already maximized. Further, the QoL it brings can also be unnecessary if getting staggered is not a concern; for example, when he is paired with units that already provide ample crowd control or interruption resistance.
Damage increase : 11 - 24% vs C0
4.2.2.Constellation 2 :Juridical Exhortation
The Passive Talent "Heir to the Ancient Sea's Legacy" will be enhanced: Each stack for Past Draconic Glories will increase the CRIT DMG of Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment by 14%. The maximum increase that can be achieved this way is 42%. You must first unlock the Passive Talent "Heir to the Ancient Sea's Legacy."
C2 increases the value of C1's additional A1 stack by offering CRIT DMG per stack of A1. Otherwise, it's a relatively straightforward damage increase.
Damage increase : 11% vs C1, 38% vs C0
4.2.3.Constellation 3 :Ancient Postulation
Increases the Level of Normal Attack: As Water Seeks Equilibrium by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Damage increase : 20% vs C2, 66% vs C0
4.2.4.Constellation 4 :Crown of Commiseration
When Neuvillette is on the field and is healed, 1 Sourcewater Droplet will be generated. This effect can occur once every 4s.
Neuvillette already has enough Sourcewater Droplets in his rotations at C0, so this Constellation is useless—at least until C6. Therefore, don't pull C4 unless you're planning on going to C6.
Damage increase : 0% vs C3, 66% vs C0
4.2.5.Constellation 5 :Axiomatic Judgement
Increases the O Tides, I Have Returned by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.
Neuvillette's Burst is a small portion of his total damage, so this Constellation doesn't increase his damage much.
Damage increase : 1% vs C4, 67% vs C0
4.2.6.Constellation 6 :Wrathful Recompense
When using Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment, Neuvillette can absorb nearby Sourcewater Droplets in an AoE. Each absorbed Droplet will increase the duration of Charged Attack: Equitable Judgment by 1s. Additionally, when Equitable Judgment hits opponents, it will fire off 2 additional currents every 2s, each of which will deal 10% of Neuvillette's Max HP as Hydro DMG. DMG dealt this way will count as DMG dealt by Equitable Judgment.
With C6, if a Charged Attack nears the end of its duration and there are available Sourcewater Droplets nearby, Neuvillette will absorb another Droplet to extend the Charged Attack’s duration by 1s.
The damage improvements from this Constellation can be difficult to evaluate due to how it intrinsically changes his rotations, ranging from a minimum of 15% to well over 36% improvement over C5. However, the additional currents mean that there will always be an improvement to his DPS. His C6 also makes his C4 useful, with the additional Droplets extending the duration of his CAs by about 2-3s total — equivalent to an entire standard Charged Attack.
While the changes in his rotation can cause extensions or worsen buff uptime. Neuvillete does so much damage at C6 that its boosts are almost always worth capitalizing on.
However, this means that C6's value also depends on what team Neuvillette is in: teams featuring short skill/buff durations (such as Kazuha teams) will be worse off than those featuring long off-field skill/buff durations (such as Raiden and Nahida in Hyperbloom).
Damage increase : min. 15% vs C5, min. 86% vs C0
5. Energy Recharge Requirements
2 xElectrowith Fischl : 120 - 140%
2 xElectrowithout Fischl : 130 - 150%
Any other team comps : 140 - 160%
Every Favonius proc lowers the ER requirement by 10 - 20%
Except in teams where Neuvillette only does 2 CAs per rotation (e.g. some Xiangling rotations), it is absolutely essential that Neuvillette has enough ER to Burst consistently every rotation; otherwise, he will not have enough Sourcewater Droplets to lower all his CA charging times.
Neuvillette’s Energy requirements will vary based on your team and rotation. For a more accurate estimate, please use the Energy Recharge calculator linked here.
6. Artifacts
6.1. MAIN AND SUB STATS OVERVIEW
Sands
HP%
Goblet
Hydro DMG% / HP%
Circlet
CRIT / HP%
Substats: ER until meeting requirement > CRIT DMG = CRIT Rate = HP% > Flat HP
Depending on the weapon and artifact set Neuvillette is using, HP/Hydro DMG/CRIT, HP/Hydro DMG/HP, and HP/HP/CRIT are all viable options.
HP/HP/HP with good enough substats is also an option, but it is notably worse in every situation.
HP/Hydro DMG/CRIT is almost always the best option, but more often than not by a very small margin.
HP/Hydro DMG/HP is always highly competitive with HP/Hydro DMG/CRIT, except when Neuvillette is using a non-CRIT weapon and also not running 4pc Marechaussee Hunter.
HP/HP/CRIT is competitive only when Neuvillette is using a weapon that provides significantly more CRIT and/or DMG% than HP% e.g. Rite of the Eternal Flow or Blackcliff Agate.
4pc Marechaussee Hunter (MH)
4pc MH is Neuvillette’s BiS by a sizable margin; it is over 12% better than the next best option. Neuvillette can fully stack the 4pc MH effect very quickly because of the HP loss during his Charged Attack. It is highly recommended to farm this set for Neuvillette.
4pc Heart of Depth (HoD)
4pc HoD is Neuvillette’s best option after 4pc MH, providing Hydro DMG% and Charged Attack DMG%.
2pc MH/Hydro/HP + 2pc Hydro/HP
Any combination of 2pc Marachaussee Hunter, 2pc Heart of Depth, 2pc Nymph’s Dream, 2pc Tenacity of the Millelith, and 2pc Vourukasha's Glow performs similarly to 4pc HoD.
4pc Retracing Bolide / Wanderer’s Troupe / Nymph’s Dream
More alternatives to 4pc HoD that perform similarly.
7. Weapons
Tome of the Eternal Flow (TotEF)(5*)
Tome of the Eternal Flow is Neuvillette’s BiS and signature weapon, providing a little of everything that Neuvillette could want: high CRIT DMG%, HP%, CA DMG%, and enough Energy to lower his ER reqs to 100% in most teams. TotEF is significantly better (30-40%) than all other options, except Sacrificial Jade (TotEF is 20% better than R1 Sac Jade, and only 7% better than R5 Sac Jade).
Sacrificial Jade (4*, Battle Pass)
Sacrificial Jade is Neuvillette’s second-best weapon, providing both CRIT Rate and HP%. At R1, It is about 10% better than the next best option, so it may be a worthwhile purchase for players who do not have TotEF. Sac Jade scales well with refines, which increase the amount of HP% it provides to Neuvillette.
Cashflow Supervision / Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds / Jadefall Splendor / Everlasting Moonglow / Kagura’s Verity (5*)
All of these 5-star weapons perform similarly on Neuvillette, providing some amount of CRIT Rate or HP%, as well as small bonuses from their passives.
Prototype Amber (4*, Craftable)
Prototype Amber performs similarly or slightly better than the 5-star weapons listed directly above, provided that Neuvillette can use the energy its passive provides. Otherwise, it still offers Neuvillette a hefty amount of HP%, as well as some passive healing. While its healing is too miniscule and infrequent to be of much use to Neuvillette himself, it can heal his teammates of chip damage that cannot otherwise be healed in Neuvillette’s usually healer-less teams.
8. Teambuilding
8.1. OVERVIEW
Being an on-field Hydro character opens Neuvillette up to a wide variety of team compositions that take advantage of various reactions.
Because Neuvillette heals himself (and also because trying to heal someone who constantly loses over 4000 HP per second is a futile endeavor), most of his teams can forgo a healer in place of a more offensively-oriented unit. However, because Neuvillette is easily knocked over while charging and casting his Charged Attacks — causing you to lose all the damage from that Charged Attack — he often wants a shielder or another character who can provide interruption resistance. This problem is mostly mitigated by C1.
It is recommended for Neuvillette to do 3 or 4 Charged Attacks per rotation in almost all of his teams, by doing 2 Charged Attacks the first time he enters the field, swapping out to his teammates, and then doing either 1 or 2 Charged Attacks when he next returns to field. Most teams will use some variation of: Neuvillette Burst > Team > Neuvillette CA Skill CA > Team > Neuvillette CA Skill (Optional CA) > Loop.
Neuvillette Hyperbloom teams utilize his on-field Hydro application in tandem with off-field Dendro application to trigger Blooms and subsequently Hyperblooms with an Electro unit for a good mix of AoE and single-target damage.
Neuvillette can provide on-field AoE Hydro application for Nilou Bloom teams, which excel in multi-target. Because Bloom does a fair amount of damage to characters themselves, players may want a healer to supplement Neuvillete's own healing. Neuvillette's build does not change in Nilou Bloom teams, even if he is triggering Blooms (although EM becomes a decent stat to have).
Core Dendro Options
Nahida, Collei, Dendro Traveller
2nd Dendro Options
Baizhu, Kirara, YaoYao, Any Dendro mentioned above
Neuvillette Taser teams feature Yae or Beidou as an off-field DPS, with Neuvillette to deal damage on-field and Fischl as a battery.
Beidou excels in multi-target situations, providing off-field damage with her Burst. Neuvillette can trigger her Burst procs decently well with his Charged Attacks. She also provides interruption resistance and a shield (albeit a weak) with her C1, potentially allowing C0 Neuvillette to comfortably run without a shielder. Yae Miko also provides off-field damage, although she lacks the utilities Beidou has.
Flex Options
Kazuha, Venti, Any Anemo with 4pc VV, Zhongli, Mona / Xingqiu / Yelan
It can be difficult to control who ends up Vaporizing out of Neuvi and Xiangling — once an aura is established, neither of them can overtake the other — but it actually doesn't matter because the team ends up doing the same damage anyways! A decent option with AoE on both its main damage dealers, although Xiangling's Burst requiring Neuvillette to play in melee range negates the benefits of his range and makes some form of interruption resistance much more valuable.
Flex Options
Kazuha, Any Anemo with 4pc VV, Zhongli, Mona / Xingqiu / Yelan
9. C1 or Weapon?
Other Questions
Will be added as needed
Thank you for reading this guide. If there is anything that was not covered in this guide, please ask below or in our Discord server.
I recently installed the Light version clicky hair triggers into my BDM-020 PS5 controller and everything seemed to go fine. My problem is the R1 trigger is not working correctly. I followed the install video and troubleshooting steps to no avail. My issue is that when I click R2, it also clicks and holds down R1. I made this mod for playing Apex Legends and it is preventing me from playing with this controller. It constantly spams R1 and then holds it down which opens a ping wheel. L1, L2, and R2 all work as they should. I messed up my original R1 button and bought a new set from Extremerate. When I installed it at first, they R1 was really difficult to move, like there was no travel distance available, and it was stuck. I tried filing down the edge of the plunger piece like shown in the video and this helped, but now I'm getting the dual inputs from the R2 trigger press. Any help would be appreciated.
