Ling: The most broken operator in Arknights

[@Zafang]

if you agree/were convinced by my arguments, share this video around to convert more people to the anti blue woman association. gnosis was it worth died for this video 🙏🙏 never forget

[@Piquliar]

#rollbluebecauseofwho (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

[@heyidk5965]

.......whale brain............ Yeah about the fun u say don't exist in my book Wait what f2p bro or new player they will pull for it if they hadn't watch these video cuz of other thousands or hundreds of video about ling

[@asdion]

I refuse to propagate propaganda against my future fourth wife.

[@abura2980]

Thank you Zafang for helping cure Yii's Lingphobia

[@verner3600]

God bless you, zafang. We should resist their attempt to rot our brains by giving us ridiculously OP operators.

[@Lewa500]

Real talk, most players are casuals, including whales, and they need broken operators like this to play the game at a decent pace. Most players aren't tryhards. It's nice to switch off your brain sometimes.

[@Mr_Rhodey]

You raise quite a lot of interesting and well-reasoned points Zaf, but I personally think there is still an Operator even more imbalanced than Ling. An Op that the hardcore meta crowd don't use because of how broken she is. A member of the Arknights roster that takes the very _idea_ of proper balance and disregards it entirely. Yes, everyone. I'm talking about Frostleaf.

[@Zafang]

i fear the waves frostleaf module will make upon release

[@untemperance]

@@Zafang :(

[@Gabriel-cs6wu]

For me, is scene, the Fucking sloth is so OP in so many ways

[@tran2044]

Based Rhodey.

[@ArachnoParadox]

you joke now but just wait when frostleaf module gives her global 3000 arts dps on bound units!!!!

[@ozeanazur4942]

and now we have wis'adel solos

[@SinisterSerp]

The last argument is just so bizarre. The blue lady really was living in your heads rent free.

[@HSRFirefly]

For me, i wouldnt say CC is an unreliable source but rather one of the points that should be considered. Of course I wouldnt argue that Ling is a very strong operator but given by the logic regarding CC, other characters that arent good in stages but are quite good on CC should be valued as well,, and especially more if the unit is good on both. Like Chalter and Surtr YEP. Correct me if i am wrong but what i saw in the video, aside from highlighting Ling was the downplaying of both Chalter and Surtr on which are very strong operators. I wouldnt say that one is better than the other but at the very least I say that theyre on equal playing field in terms of balans. Also it is true that CC is only a few stage compared to others, but technically speaking, CC is the hardest difficulty the game can offer and is the peak of end game. Since to be honest, any stages that isnt high risk CC is clearable with a team of 3-4 stars

[@Mikufan-lb7zu]

yeah, yeah, sure the most, yeah

[@aquamagma]

I agree with this entirely. What I love about arknights, is just how varied and creative gameplay can be. Be it optimising clears so fewer operators do more stuff, or limiting your operators, allowing more nicher operators to shine; a lot of the fun comes down to seeing operators help each other in many different ways. Ling just destroys this entirely, as her kit allows her to do virtually everything by herself. Block? Not an issue. DPS? She has it. Tank? Look at her summons' HP, DEF and RES - literally among the highest in the game. And if the summons dies? She recovers it back again, meaning nothing is loss. There's nothing fun about her kit, which makes clears including her (or rather, just her) interesting at all. There's no synergy to watch, there's no gimmicks to play with - she feels so goddam repetitive. The problem isn't because just she's broken. It's also because she's incredibly boring. And boring + broken is just the worst. Ironically, she offers little to any support, for a "supporter".

[@arclight5934]

Creativity has been dead for a long time now (at least for normal players). It's not just Ling that caused this, all of the meta ops such as the cornerstones, Kaltsit, Chalter, etc does the same. The current community is wayyy different compared to the past. Nowadays people just want to have easier time and trivialized things instead.

[@Yuki-iq9dh]

Idk man its not like she can be used with other ops anyways because you know, she take like 7 deploy slots with her dragon alone, 8 including herself. So solo clear with Ling is literally the only way to play with Ling, putting her with other ops will just make her weaker. So if she can't really be put with other ops the she must have the capability to clear the stage without other ops. Summoner themself are already niche class that maybe only 10% of players actually use them. That number goes even lower as the chapter progress because they dont have the capability to actually solo higher stages. So my point is, if a summoner, a class that is designed to take multiple deployment slots by themself, making it difficult to deploy other ops, CAN'T justify themself of actually taking care the stage with their summon, then there is no point of actually using them.

[@CheeseInvader]

why would that make her weaker? it's not like you need for everyone to be deployed together in a stage. For example,If someone dies, you have the dragons to deploy. As everyone is saying, she is pretty strong, so having one or two less dragons are not going to make her some kind of deadweight in the squad.

[@WingedZero8]

Can't believe you would try so hard to trick people into not pulling for Ling. You can't keep her all to yourself. We will all become as poets.

[@Piquliar]

*drunk poets ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

[@broadbandislife]

@@Piquliar ...there's other kinds?

[@ghoster236]

@@broadbandislife horny poets?

[@sommerblume9671]

I don't think most arknights fan know a thing about poetry tbh, and I say this as someone who writes.

[@Piquliar]

@@sommerblume9671 l mean EN doesn't read lol.

[@Danbo_]

Yes but I want her still so your opinion is invalid. : )

[@Zafang]

you're an e0 player you're legally allowed to pull for her and use her

[@nashhope]

Danbo choosing violence you gotta love it

[@JsonicGD]

She will break e0 runs prob

[@loops5839]

giga chad god level opinion

[@gaelx3d674]

@@Zafang ok but what if even E0 ling is OP?

[@Gillyexp]

All the reasons you gave for not liking her are exactly why I want her. I struggle with difficulty in this game and need someone to help me with clearing shit until my roster gets bigger. So she’s exactly what I need right now.

[@Xairathan]

I think that you raise a good minority perspective: that players who are newer and have lesser resources/smaller rosters can highly benefit from getting Ling at S3 (not even needing M3 necessarily). Additionally, using Ling to 'carry' their smaller roster can allow them to (a) build more niche units that might not otherwise be used because Ling carries the burden of DPS and (b) improves the player's understanding of placements and timings that would otherwise not be necessary for a 'Ling + Unga Bunga' meta squad. With that said, I think the concern with that might be that gameplay gets dry if everything becomes 'Ling plus extra bodies', but I suppose that would ultimately depend on the player themselves and whether they want to branch out more.

[@cat-vv9xb]

And that's fine, don't let elitists gatekeep you from using whatever strong operator is out there. It's your own choice what you want to do in your own game.

[@kingshrimp9321]

Huh, you know I never thought about it that way, sort of using Ling as more of a safety net so you can bring the more niche operators. Then when things get dicey Ling is there as an emergency op

[@BrandonHeat243]

It's interesting. I do get the criticisms about balance and how lame it is that one character basically dominates all the records in the game now. That being said, I fucking love OP summoners in games. I have ever since playing Diablo 2 Necromancer when I was a kid. Hell, right now I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous and I'm playing as a Lich even though I don't really like evil characters just because I love reviving my enemies and turning them into my pawns. So yeah, while I do get the criticisms and I feel for people bummed by Ling, I find her design fun and "fun >>>> everything else" to me when it comes to gaming. She's the #1 OP I want and has been since the second she was revealed. Got 300 pulls ready and willing to use them if need be.

[@ChuuniMaster]

Ch'en the Holungday, Eya, Surtr, and Silverash are the ops you must pull at any cost.

[@kurospades861]

Tldr; he REALLY hates Ling.

[@CatshanEUW]

cant wait to create an alt, get myrtle to e2 in a week and have a completely full team because i can use ling from support unit

[@asheqabeer1798]

Best to pull ling so I can use skalter, kaltsit etc

[@Box2_]

Holy shit he did it

[@reguret126]

Its Not Broken Its just Lore Accurate :)

[@artek0050]

When I started playing this game, I really liked deepcolor. Having a summoner seemed like the coolest thing in the game. Then I realized that in the grand scheme of things she was really weak and would never be on my team when I had much better operators to choose from. So this brings me back to my roots with this game and I'm excited for it. Now I have an actual reason to run a summoner because she can actually compete with the other extremely strong 6 stars.

[@SpookyVerii]

I think in general people have shifted to playing “the most efficiently” and wonder why the game becomes boring. On some level, there may *be* fun to be had in playing efficiently, but after playing the game for 2 years I’ve kinda come to the conclusion that it’s way more fun to use bizarre/niche ops over the same 5-6 units again and again. What’s even the point to trivializing all in game content? Where is the fun in that? (Add me I have an m6 kirar-) After playing IS2 for a while, I stopped using my Pot4 Ling because she made… every run boring. I stopped using thorns because he also made every run boring. You have them and you basically win most of the run, and it completely stopped being interesting to me. Tbh my unpopular opinion is that surtr isn’t that broken. She’s strong, sure, but she actually takes thinking to use on some level. “What am I going to use her on, how am I going to place her, will her talent proc before I can get skill off here?”

[@ouea5435]

I definitely agree. I think AK is one of those games that gets easier the longer you play because unlike before, you have busted E2 ops that will solve the puzzle for you with barely any effort. That's one of the reasons why people find IS fun, because it takes you back to those days when your ops don't one shot everything and you had to rely on lower rarity ops.

[@untemperance]

She isn't that broken anymore because they started designing bosses around having gimmicks instead of being Patriot. In fact, they don't even feel that tanky anymore for the most part besides the occasional Blood Knight, and phys damage has received some options that made it viable again (that and a RES nerf on pretty much everything that I feel is not just targeted at Surtr but also Arts damage having been just busted overall). Surtr at this point is just another tool in the toolkit because they had to redesign intelligently around her. Ling doesn't even have the downsides that Surtr has unless they somehow design content around saying "fuck you" to a high tile operator across the map which will negatively affect other high tiles that aren't Ling.

[@aminoacid3192]

oh hello fellow m6 kirara haver

[@luchin7742]

Surtr currently competes with Ch'en Alter on the most broken unit in the game currently in CN (which excludes ling for obvious reasons) She's utterly broken and has been the one of the most effective units for the longest time, she even has so many uses in chapter9 that was tailored against her, plus she's amazing at dealing with elite mobs which a lot of people tend to ignore. However i respect your personal opinion!

[@SpookyVerii]

@@aminoacid3192 you and I both know it is a mistake yet we both are kirara gamers forever trapped in kirara hell. it haunts me to this day, yet still, i am Kirara Gaming Forever

[@Lewa500]

So your strategy to bring Ling home is to pretend you don't like her. I see you, I see you.

[@n-dawwg2570]

Ling is boring, sure, but saying that she's more broken than Chalter is dumb. "I have never felt that CC is that good a judge of an operator." Lmao. Anyway comparing against Surtr/Chalter: Ling can do better when she has all your DP and deployment slots, which means she is much less efficient. She is nowhere near as flexible and braindead as either of them - Surtr is just play the stage with your other units, then drop her on the boss and active S3 in 5 seconds (lmao). Chalter at least requires some time before her skill is ready and is less tanky as a ranged unit, but she more than makes up for it with humongous AOE range (can hit multiple lanes), a skill that lasts multiple waves (because she kills everything in a few hits she has plenty of ammo left), and the flexibility to kill drones (Ling S3 and Surtr both suck against drones) Also worth noting - Surtr ignores res, Chalter debuffs defense, but Ling has to brute force it. Deploy slots matter a lot. For example, if I'm using a team with guards plus Chalter, I can use Chalter's skill to hold a wave, then use the guards' skills to hold until Chalter recovered. Ling has to either brute force a wave or two with dragon stats while waiting for skill, or try to activate early for the first wave and activate late on the second wave. It can also be difficult to drop a dragonling where you need a dragon and keep it alive for 18 seconds so you can merge into a dragon. Sometimes this means using skill at an inconvenient time and sometimes it means finding a creative location where it takes less damage but can still merge into a more useful position once redeploy is finished. Ling isn't a big-brain operator at all but she's not anywhere near as OP as Chalter. Being upset that other people clear stuff with Ling is dumb too - "how dare other people have fun with this unit I don't like?" If you don't like her, don't watch the content. That simple. I don't mean to be too negative though. I can see why people dislike Ling as boring, and am inclined to agree. And I enjoy your other channel content! Just want to put my two cents in on what makes an operator OP (while expressing my virulent hate for Chalter)

[@yanfly]

Your arguments are invalid because she's an onee-san with huuuuuuuuuuuuuge dragons.

[@ouea5435]

honestly, for average doctors who just wanna clear stages fast and with minimum effort, I think ling is just on par with cornerstone ops like thorns, blaze, mudrock, mountain. difference is, cornerstone ops don't require a brain at all. set them down and just let them do the work. with ling, there's still some skill timing involved. there's a reason why afk/ez clear guides exist, a lot of doctors are lazy. for those doctors, they would just look at ling's manual activation non-infinite skill and go back to thorns and blaze lol that said, i do agree that ling basically broke down low op clears + IS + supporterknights + etc. by combining the strengths of already pretty OP units and adding more on top of that into a single op. imo tho, she's just another op that everyone will use to judge new units. "oh new unit can't do this while ling/etc. can, so not worth building"

[@littlejohn8435]

Would've been a plausible argument but the stages are also increasing in difficulty with the addition of stronger operators. Also the fact that she is a limited operator that is very strong and makes people want her. I do not have any qualms with strong operators but making a strong gameplay on a limited operator makes the said operators more of a cash grab. This method just incentivises the company to make operators that powercreeps the current gameplay to make more money. Limited operators should be more of a trophy that is also useful not making powercreep.

[@fqck1999]

yeah i put mudrock alone and sleep to farm rocks lol

[@yuzumeow]

Nah. Theres no brain needed for Ling gameplay

[@niallk9336]

@@littlejohn8435 That's a Surtr and Balans effect. I don't see stages being designed around "don't use Ling".

[@noktal_the_kid]

Your arguments are quite understandable especially the one about the "Just use Ling" but to be fair playing the most efficiently is the choice that some players do, even if Ling wasn't broken this kind of player would keep using the other broken operators that already exist so for me the state of the game hasn't really changed at all. People who likes to play meta will continue to play meta and the players who likes to clear stages with some personal challenges will continue to do so. And personally I'd take Ling's kind of broken over Chalter's kind of broken everyday to be fair especially since I hate the fact that Chalter is just a swimsuit variant of Chen compared to the other alters who are more interesting but that's just me I'm nobody. Edit : I tried to fix my weak english.

[@3takoyakis]

Nah that's fine Nobody likes summer chen anyway Ppl have been served an idea that alter is only bcs worthy lore reason even though *_*HG DEV simply didn't mean so and using that idea to slowly release alter units*_*

[@becauseiwanttoseecommentsb984]

Chalter feels more braindead to me than Ling honestly. Only bring Chalter out when I'm desperate. Ling, with the need to think about where and when to deploy summon offers more thinking. Esp since personally summoner is one of the archetype I haven't use much (and before Ling, I don't really like them except Scene from some brief tries so far).

[@HiImYii]

thanks for the exposure therapy zaf.

[@Xi_Vi]

this may be valid but I’m sorry Zafang. I will endure how braindead Ling is but my 2 year masochism with summonerknights perfectly ends with Ling. Besides, summonerknight dokutahs likes to suffer so we’ll probably use Ling’s S1 or S2 instead 👌 Also Ling’s VA is Komi’s Mom.

[@augustuslunasol10thapostle]

I love lings s2 i really love it just man summonerknights with s2 ling will be pog

[@arandomguywitharandomname4187]

Lingma balls

[@jo-ri-oh8950]

There is one part of your argument that I am not really agree with you FOR THE MOMENT and it's about the future stages balance. You absolutely right about Surtr and how devs tried to think about her when designing stages, but Ling, I'm not sure... Let's take Chen Alter for example, she just f-ing broken but, correct me if I wrong, it's been almost one year since her release and we got nothing from the devs to limit her impact. I think it's because she's a limited character. Unlike Surtr, Mudrock Thorns and other "braindead" ops, If you don't get her during her banner you almost sure you will never get her in future if you not a freaking Leviathan. And it will be a bit "unfair" from the devs to balance increases the scaling of the around a character that a part of the player base will never get and I think it's also the case for Ling. The only hard counter that seems designed against her is that tag from CC#8 but nothing as hard unlike Surtr. Again, I can be totally wrong, my knowledge about CN content is limited, but hearing since her release how easily she breaks every new stages makes me think that the devs don't really care about balancing the game around her, at least at the moment. Sorry for my terrible English BTW...

[@Piquliar]

I agree with your reasoning. No stages should ever be balanced around limited operators as this heavily disincentivizes newer players who would be punished for not being able to get them reasonably easily.

[@mayatree0]

Chen alter is now being balanced around the introduction of enemies with dodge rates tho.

[@DrSilvergun]

Because it's extremely diffcult to balance around absurd dps while keeping operators with less dps remotely usable and not making stages boring ( by introducing mechanics where extreme dps is punished for example, that kind of gimmick gets old fast)

[@PanRobak.]

@@Piquliar I'd argue that no stage should ever be balanced around ANY SINGLE operators. That just sounds like poor game design to me.

[@Piquliar]

@@PanRobak. Agreed

[@Zarven1]

Can't say I'm convinced. I play the game for myself, why would I be influenced because random people on the internet think she's too strong, even though they could you know, just not use her.

[@tortoise-chan]

did you watch the video? a huge part of many people's enjoyment of arknights comes from community engagement. I can clear a hard stage and then go on KZbin to find different clears, and get a ton of enjoyment in seeing all the different creative ways that the same challenge can be completed. this has been getting less and less possible recently with surtr, chalter, etc. since I already know exactly what to expect from content creators. The only ones left who make clear videos that are actually worth watching are nicheknights and classknights players, it will only get worse with ling, and thats a fucking shame

[@Zarven1]

​@@tortoise-chan And how is that in any way meaningful, the operator gets released whether you like it or not. We're getting what china gets delayed, why would they change anything major for global? Everybody knows how strong she is, if people don't want to use her, then don't use her. She's most certainly not going to show up in 3* clears, nor in 4* clears. I get that he is unsatisfied, but a random youtuber being unhappy is not going to influence me rolling.

[@rinsichiruka8948]

Well yeah, i have a similar opinion as you are, and i also enjoying arknights creative clear content on KZbin, nonetheless it isn't gonna make huge difference for my actual gameplay on the game itself, i planning to use every character i like in the game, i will not let every single 6 star ops getting dusted in my collection, i just like high rarity ops, but i prefer waifu over metaso, i will ignore whatever other players says about my favorite ops, if she good for me then she is, and i also make 2 different account with similar level for my complete enjoyment, because i can't get a ton of resources and ops i want to raise, have 2 account fill the spot that i want to try with different gameplay.

[@arclight5934]

I've already said this before and I will say it again. Why care about balance now when the balance itself is already broken wayyyy long time ago. Yes, Ling is a broken ops, but so was Thorns, Chalter, Surtr, Kaltsit, etc. I undertand with your fatigue because I have the same feeling. But what caused my fatigue is not Ling. What caused my fatigue is how bland the community has become. No matter where I go, I always see people just using stuffs like Thorns, Mountain, Mudrock, etc. Doesn't matter what kind of content it is, I always see these ops. It's just become bland and boring at this point. A friend of mine just returned to this game after quitting for 2 years and you know what? It feels so refreshing seeing him clearing recent stages like WR and BI with such an old ops. Something that you almost never see nowadays.

[@lokgames6666]

At least with the other operators there's still a semblance of a squad or some usages of skills. With Ling you most of the time don't even need to press the skill button, just place higher forms and you win the level. While Mountain is the most egregious offender of the problem you proposed, Thorns still has some skill charging, he can still die if enemies can reach him. Mon3tr has low atspd and is almost tied into its healer's range. Chalter (I can't believe I'm defending her) doesn't perform much when off skill.

[@mayatree0]

It's because HG will do everything they can to balance them by fucking around future content. See the crazy res on Chapter 9? Yes, that is their direct answer to Surtr and Eyja. You see CC9 and Chapter 10 with DPS checks and dodges? Yes that's an answer to Chelter. All of that shit at the expense of other not so popular and old operators that's slowly being put into irrelevancy without any good justification whatsoever. Now imagine Ling, a literal definition of a cracked DPS and Tanking checks in Arknights, already powercreeps literally some of the 6* in the game and makes almost every stage in the game look like a joke without a thought with the devs having to balance that out. The next CC already shot other summoners in the head by removing what makes these summoners good (cheap force multiplier) at the expense of making Ling challenging to use even tho a flagpipe can literally just fix one with absolutely zero issues at the good cost of having a dragon that's literally equivalent of a dreadnought and AOE Guard with the tankiness of Mudrock and atk like that of Surtr (but a bit higher)

[@arclight5934]

@LoKGames @MayaTree When I'm talking about Thorns, Mountain, etc being broken, I don't mean their brokeness is the issue. My main issue is how they killed the variety within the game. Who cares if they need some skills to use, who cares if HG has to balance the content around them. The fact remains that they're broken and people will tend to use them no matter what the situation is. You already know people have been saying "Just Surtr this, just Chalter that" for so long. Now what would have changed if they add "Just Ling this" into the mix? Nothing. Things will remain the same. The cycle will continue. HG will create another broken ops, the community will bash said ops, the community will use said ops and say "Just *ops name* it", and the community will start defending said ops once a new broken ops got released. That's what the community does nowadays. We, as an AK player always says that you don't need certain ops to clear stuffs. So why are we stuck using the same thing over and over again. Deep down we know that everyone is viable, so why not try them out? I've already said it in my main comment that it's refreshing seeing a friend of mine clearing recent stages without using the newer broken ops. He's still using ops that was released only until Ancient Forge came out. It's refreshing seeing ops that was extremely rarely being used actually being used for once instead of the usual broken ones. There's a hella lot of ops that rarely get any use anymore. Ops like Hoshi, Hellagur, Ange, Siege while perfectly viable are rarely used nowadays, and there's even more of them within 5* categories. The players nowadays are too absorbed into using meta/broken ops just to have easier time clearing a stage. It just makes things bland and lose the fun aspect it used to have in the beginning when the game first came out.

[@CheeseInvader]

@@arclight5934 As you said, it will not ruin anything if operators like Chalter and Thorns didn't do it yet. But it's a fact that in a game like that, always with new content, some of the old content is going to become obsolete. And the same could be said about characters in most times, also, you don't want to always play with Hellagur if you always played with him. So when a new character releases, it's normal for that operator to be in spotlight, even more if that OP is powerful and looks fun. My point? it's that this is the same thing that happens since the launch of the game, I remember even now people talking about how Silverash and Eyja could clear most of the game content, and they are still powerfull even now, but now we have other meta to play with, so it's not just Silverash and Eyja everywhere, and that's fine by me, if the game already has op units, at least put more than one, so people can choose. As for difficult, well, I can't really tell, since that would depend more on Hypergryph, but even with all those metas, when I play with them I still find enjoyment AND difficult in the game (like IS2). And since this is an PvE game, you don't have to always play with the same squad, the same could be said to content creators so I don't think every streamer and youtuber is going to play with Ling only. For example, I have almost every meta unit in the game but I don't use them always, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for everyone. As for the old characters, people are still playing with them, I still play with some of the characters you said, I play with Angelina and Siege since the launch, and I do have Gnosis and Suzuran and even Flametail, and if I play with those, I'm sure other people also play. Well, it's true that sometimes those characters do need something more, luckly, Arknights have Skins and Modules which helps a lot.

[@AyaTanaka_]

cope

[@MistralNorthwind]

Whew, there's a lot to digest and yes, this is indeed a really well put video and really well explained. I might be wrong in how I understood some stuff from you so level with me pls x) While I kinda agree with you with pretty much everything, at the end. the overall feeling I get from your perspective is "I don't like her because of the way I play and interact with the community". You put so much emphasis on how you feel 'fatigue' from people talking/using her rather than how you use her, so basically you summarized it up in "it puts in jeopardy how I interact with Arknights ni a personal level". While that's as valid as any other reason - specially because you are not the only one who engages the game that way - I feel like you're just speaking for a part of the community. Dunno if a majority or a minority, but given the rest of the concerns you said (gameplay balances for example), I think you sold her as the impending doom for the game, while it's just another Surtr or Chen. Which in short means: Nothing will change from a gameplay pespective. One thing you like is people sharing 'runs' and trying stuff and playing around "personal challenges" and you're worried about how that's gonna play out with Ling being out... She's "new" so of course your feed will be like that for a while, but it will simply go back to what it used to, just as it happened with EVERY other operator these past years. Seeing how's it been with Surtr, or even Chalter... Why would you think that would change? People will a 100% still try runs with odd operators or weird combinations, and a I'm a 100% the game won't be 'balanced' around Ling herself, simply because they demonstrated plenty of times they know how to balanced some stuff out. It will not be perfect but time will tell. As how Ling will impact gameplay, speaking for the 'part of the community' that I belong to - the "people who simply plays the game and doesn't care about how the rest plays", she's simply another broken character in the rooster, and nothing else. Using her or not will depend on: "I wanna make content easier" or "I don't wanna make content easier". And that's it. There's a lot of playstyles in this game: There's people who likes engaging in EVERY mechanic in a game and taking the long routes and making it harder, and there's some others who prefer straight paths and automatizations and not thinking. This is just the same. Me and a plethora of people I know, own Chalter, and we sometimes just simply avoid her because we don't wanna use her - period. We don't use a broken char, there still might be PLENTY of reasons for it, one not being "I don't wanna use her because she's broken", but rather "I have Exu, but I like using Platinum and see how that plays out" type of mentaility. And that's as valid as someone who wants the 'crème dela crème' of operators and speed through content instead. BUT sometimes we might run into Risk 18 and be like "fuck it, I'll use Chalter", and we won't go with our head down thinking "OoOoH My GoD I uSeD ChAlTeR tO cLeAr CoNtEnT, sHaMe On Me"... we play for ourselves, not looking validation from others or showing off our skills, so Ling doesn't really play a part in our gameplay plan. When I say that you're more worried about YOUR personal gameplay rather than the game, it's because of what you said in the minute 18:25. You said "People will say

[@Zafang]

yes, as explained in the video, my main concerns are how she affects my enjoyment of the game. i felt that a more personal aspect would be important to mention in regards to the idea of "why don't you just not use her". my feed has also been ling for 6 months so i think i've waited adequately long enough I didn't mean for this video to be a doompost but unfortunately people seem to have taken it as such. she will most definitely not kill the game but rather she has affected a specific aspect that i personally care about. for casuals, she's a godsend to be able to clear stages easily and i think that's a plus in itself

[@skr0gu3]

smoll question: has ling actually killed arknights content by any means? the 3/4/5 star only still exists, and tower of operators are still there for those who don't use ling. i dont really follow CN content creator that much, but since there are contents actively avoiding using surtr/thorns/mountain/chotgun then why does ling affect things when non-ling s3 category has now been created

[@Zafang]

low op as a category is effectively dead with her now, be it on cc or normal maps. while lingless category exists a lot of players dont care for it so it ends up with only a few players each time attempting it

[@MistralNorthwind]

@@Zafang I see... well, if it helps, I really think I got your point across!

[@shadymodnation5781]

There is another point worth looking at regarding the proposition that Arknights could potentially make the game "Ling-required to clear unless you big brain", which is a proposition I don't see happening, at least because of Ling. Remember, Ling was, as is the case for any new operator, an attempt to make money that exists for the duration of the banner. After the banner, the limited operator is gone and Arknights has to make do without Ling. After the banner is gone, who profits with Ling being a potential "must have" op? The only ones who profit are the player who got her and then continue to get the huge amount of 20 Credit points because their support Ling was used. It is not the case that every time we go to the store Ling appears on your face, promoted in a pop up window asking you to buy her. The banner is gone, Ling is gone. You could propose that, even though Ling is gone, perhaps they could turn Ling into a vital op where Arknights requires her to function so that they can create hype and craving in the community for Ling so that more people spend 300 pulls in a future limited rate up, but do we have the numbers of how many people do that and how much money Arknights does with those who whale themselves into sparking a past limited? I ask because I really don't know if those numbers are out. Chances are Yostar can't distinguish between those who pulled for more pots in a new limited operator and then decided to spark a past limited op vs those who pulled mainly just to spark for a limited op. I guess that would be a question missing in their usual questionnaires. So to me, Arknights mechanics will exist without Ling. Ling tanks and does DPS, so do other operators in the game. To me the most game-changing mechanics introduced by an operator so far are not Ling's stats and DPS but the status and elemental medics which really feel like they are necessary in your team and Yostar has provided free alternatives so that you can have one of those in your team. Your post resonated with me, Mistral Northwind, specially the part about having Ch'alter and going out your way not to use her, to the point you forget she's there. I mainly use her as a substitute for my lack of proper Casters. My best Caster is Ifrit and she is great but we know she shoots in a straight line. lol

[@meh4294]

I'm sorry ,man ,I tried to pull Lee, got spoked by blue women 😔😔😔😔

[@yearslate9349]

This video has given me a contrarian desire to try her out. As someone who learns best by experiencing things for myself, and rarely engages with the community, I want to see how close my own experience employing her will be to the provided descriptions. See for myself just how overbearing a character she is. Once I've done that, I'll consider how often I actually want to deploy her.

[@Rumby]

Time to m9.

[@Piquliar]

Yes, respect my waifu. My best girl Rosa too ( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

[@hexerin]

2:33 - Slight error. Mudrock at E2-90 has 3 block, not 2 block.

[@tyaty]

Mudrock also heals herself, her regenerating shields nullify any damage x times and her skills give batter buff then Ling's S3 with much better uptime.

[@LunatheMoonDragon]

Excuse me i've been saving exclusively for her since the second i saw her so i will happily E2 lv 90 her the second I get her and never find her boring

[@loge69]

yeah lol idk why ppl keep quoting x char makes game boring like lol let the ppl decide wht is boring or not its subjective let them play who they wanna play

[@tortoise-chan]

@@loge69 did you watch the video? a huge part of many people's enjoyment of arknights comes from community engagement. I can clear a hard stage and then go on KZbin to find different clears, and get a ton of enjoyment in seeing all the different creative ways that the same challenge can be completed. this has been getting less and less possible recently with surtr, chalter, etc. since I already know exactly what to expect from content creators. The only ones left who make clear videos that are actually worth watching are nicheknights and classknights players. it will only get worse with ling, and thats a fucking shame

[@loge69]

@@tortoise-chan so it's basically killing the content creators if ppl r using Surtr chalter despite being AK community s most quoted quote they will game too boring i wonder why they r still using them And lingless exist and its no body s fault that it's getting neglected Do again it's game ppl will play how they wanna play Dude literally created video that why small part of community is getting no content because certain OP exist So yeah let me try to convert everyone into antiling Blue woman bad lmao And as far as en goes they r not that bright ull still see ppl thinking ling is not broken so ull be fine

[@CheeseInvader]

@@tortoise-chan If Surtr and Chalter didn't killed the community enjoyment till now, I'm pretty sure Ling will not do this, there's also IS2 to play/watch now, so I doubt the community will suffer from that. Btw I hear people complain about how one Op operator is going to ruin the game since Silverash, so yeah, since the launch, and we're still here.

[@kingshrimp9321]

I can totally see where you're coming from, I think part of Ling's impact that hurts the most is the idea that some operators will get benched when she arrives, "why use _____ when you can just use Ling?" kind of thing. As if her existence renders most operators useless cuz she can do everything they can and better...

[@tigerfalco]

That'll be annoying but in the end screw the haters and use who you want. I know Exusiai is still meta, but it often felt like people downplayed her because of Ash, even though generally speaking Exu is better still. People shit on Rosmontis because she can't hit drones and her attack isnt high enough to kill elites as fast as they want, but she's so fun and I use her for stuff I don't think many think to do (like dropping her 3rd skill during Nearl light banner to bait sniper shots). Ling can do a lot, but she can't do everything. Operators have their Niches and someone specializing in a niche is often better than a generalist depending on the niche.

[@3takoyakis]

It's much worse ig? IMO, she's a kaltsit that instead summon a "surtr", she summons "mudrock" Surtr and thorns replace some units but ling replace most if not all

[@3takoyakis]

Then again, why bother hearing other player especially when your acc alr old, it's single player game

[@DallyLama93]

Boy did this video age like wet bread.

[@hise2]

gacha games are no fun if you think too much about things like this. Just enjoy and appreciate the game😤

[@airisakura1119]

true words, there is already so many charakters too.

[@Piquliar]

On a side-note. Skadborn's S1 is disgustingly powerful. I was playing IS and she was my second 'medic' and even at E1, her S1 made damage mean nothing almost. I gotta put some masteries on it. It's such a wicked burst of healing.

[@pbtugas9892]

agree, thinking of also m3 her s1 as it could lower the downtime of the skill. prolly not gonma use it much, but i love her so meh its not like i mind at all lol

[@niaford690]

it makes mudrock several times more unkillable lmao

[@trendmadegamer8725]

Ok whos Skadborn?

[@Piquliar]

@@trendmadegamer8725 Skadi The Corrupting Heart. The seaborn priestess essentially.

[@trendmadegamer8725]

@@Piquliar damn! Sad I have her

[@diredoge331]

sounds like a skill issue

[@ridicoluslevel]

You know, I see where you're coming from and honestly this video kind of "opened my eyes" when it comes to Ling. However I'm still gonna be pulling for her (I mean its not guaranteed I will get her but still) because I'm kinda braindead when it comes to strategy and I'm pretty sure I have anger issues, so sometimes hard stages get me really agitated. Ling will be a good fix for that. With that said though I will try to use her sparingly thanks to your video

[@MyrdinAnnoth]

Honestly all summoners should replenish summons (1) on skill use. The whole reason to play one is to have fun with the summons. The most boring part of a summoner is having no summons to play with. Otherwise, yes Ling is a lot of fun and yes she is pretty damn OP.

[@lazerlake]

Not fun? Speak for yourself, Ling is everything I've ever wanted.

[@LucyWhiteheart_]

this video makes me feel like i should apologize for liking her would have pulled for her even if she was the worst 6* in the game idk

[@vukvidanovic8276]

Ling is our Queen.

[@aminehsu6629]

Honestly, not personally anti-Ling myself, but I appreciate this video just so I have something to point to for when I see people claiming "She isn't that good" when she's clearly the most powerful unit in the game.

[@gamingrex2930]

“tbh she’s overrated so i don’t use her” classic schizo ak twitter Ling is god tier

[@sweetillusions5495]

I remember this same argument with Chen alter "She isn't that good" > Unit that trivializes content and makes the other units in their subclass look like a joke

[@Khroniclas]

I'm gonna build her because I build all broken stuff. But I probably won't really use her after getting her to 200% trust. Unless I am truly desperate or feel like trust farming. I almost never use my meta squad anymore anyhow. It makes the game too easy, even before Ling, even before Chalter. Even using mainly Karlan Trade operators, Carnelian, Rosa and Whisperain, the break the ice event was a joke until the EX-boss stage. It's nice to have broken operators for emergencies, but I want to have fun. Sometimes having insanely broken operators is fun, when you want to have a power trip. On the other hand, I want to play with new and interesting operators. Not a squad that is guaranteed to beat everything that the game throws at it. This is why I choose not to use my meta team most of the time. This is why I am unlikely to use Ling in the long term.

[@m.p4603]

Rosa with module...

[@brunobruno-c1d]

while i dont agree with her being the most broken, she's certainly one of the strongest ones but do remember that she's competing against eyja, ifrit, surtr, ch'en alter, and skadi alter skadi alter might be the weirdest one here, but she's very broken for a support, since she can give you like the equivalent of getting an e2 to 80 in a decent range all while healing but yeah, ling is certainly one of the best summoners, i just wish summoners in general took less slots, if it has to, could've been at least 0.5 slots per summon, that way they can work better with other operators instead of just taking their slots, tho its less an issue for ling since her summons are effectively operators

[@whitewall2253]

Eyja, Ifrit, Surtr, Chalter and Skalter are all broken because they do one thing so well they render everyone else who does that thing redundant. Lings the same, She's absolutely busted for her Niche of low Operator clears and is probably the best trust farmer in the game because of that. You could also use her summons as hard hitting roadblocks you replace with helidropped DPS when needed since with the summons respawn timers she's basically throwing around fast redeploy mudrocks.

[@mayatree0]

@@whitewall2253 but the operators you mentioned above like Eyja,Ifrit, Surtr still requires some strategies especially now that future maps have been optimized to balanced around them as seen by Chapter 9's insane Res that makes surtr and Eyja more challenging to use and in the future how the introduction of enemies that can dodge can make Chelter a bit challenging to use but definitely not Ling, Ling is both DPS and Tanking checks being cracked to possible highs with no downsides whatsoever

[@brunobruno-c1d]

@@mayatree0 in regards to the insane res, its kinda funny because surtr can just melt them anyway, tho anyone without res down gets screwed its very hard to counter those operators without also screwing everyone else who is much weaker, which at the end still leaves them as the most powerful, just with everyone scaled down tho res up specifically isnt thaat effective due to the many ways one could lower it, but at least they tried

[@mayatree0]

@@brunobruno-c1d yeah right? And guess who got fucked? The other arts damage ops who don't have the firepower the same as Surtr and Eyja is. Now imagine Ling and having a stage balancing around her without shooting other ops like the AOE Guards and other summoners in the process

[@disintegratedstrategist]

Is she Goldenglow? No. Then I shall not pull.

[@Empoleonman522the2]

Find it funny how on release everyone thought she was useless.................granted I sit around /alg/ way too much but still

[@luchin7742]

Before watching the video My main reason why i dislike the concept of ling is because of.. how much she trivializes "account resource management" In the past you needed a few 3*/4* units e1+ on average, an E2 so you can pick a support unit and struggle with tight skill activations, replacing units that dont do much in said stage ect (and that was fun for me) But now.. you can just E2 Myrtle, grab Ling from support unit and invalidate 80% of stage difficulties for absolutely zero reason. Using her takes so little investment compared to the traditional squad. She's way overtuned for her concept and a one-man army shouldnt exist in a squad building game at an unhealthy level, in my opinion at least. Still i'll pull for her because i have a thing for blue women.. (Mostima and Ch'en) . Edit: I watched the video and i agree with most of your points but i'll have to disagree with HG balancing around her, i doubt that they would ever balance anything around her or modules and most of the game content is very clearable without High End squads anyway. But this point reminded me of something.. Why on earth can she max risk daily CCs effortlessly?!

[@tyaty]

She is no actually used in high risk CC.

[@luchin7742]

@@tyaty I said Daily CC. She is in every Low OP count clear ever.

[@KumaBones]

Im totally fine with broken ling because: They take up 2 deployment slots, cost 46 dp, and they can't be healed outside of making new higher forms. She is a *Limited summoner. So it makes sense that if her summons take up 2 deployment slots, that they should ALSO be viable enough to replace ops. With ling you're not bringing one operator... each dragon counts as another operator. It just that she takes one spot in your roster.

[@cyclenitram7598]

Her summons can be healed by Skadi alter

[@KumaBones]

@@cyclenitram7598 another LIMITED 6* operator, who needs to be at M3 max level to "heal" for any decent capacity. And it's also NOT reliable against hard-hitting enemies. It's only good for things like miasma, or small damage that they take from weaker enemies. That's not exactly "OP/broken" it's "usable" at best. Just something useful if you happen to have both LIMITED units

[@pedromonteiro1196]

@@KumaBones if passive healing works, wouldnt Blemi work too? Hell, Perfumer might heal them and she wouldnt need to have them in range

[@KumaBones]

@@pedromonteiro1196 perfumer's 22hp/s.... Outside of miasma maps: If 22hp/s made a difference, then ling's dragons wouldn't need to get healed. If something can actually kill them, you need more than 22hp/s to heal them. However, yes Blemishine can heal them. But she would have to be tanking the damage & attacking, to be able to use said heal. At which point, why are you even needing to heal them, if blemi is tanking damage? It's not like she has the range/reach to hide behind them, and still hit enemies. You might get some maps where she can still attack without taking damage, but that's iffy. I guess it could be a niche in a CC map, to push/pull a stream of enemies towards blemishine so she can consistently generate SP for her heal. Or use Aak's skill to feed blemi SP through his attacks. But at that point you're using 2 extra ops, just to keep Ling's summons healed... Each of which, takes 2 deployment slots, and 46 dp. That's a lot of effort, so not exactly "broken OP" with the conditions required.

[@KumaBones]

@@pedromonteiro1196 but to your point, you could simply use Saileach S2M3, and Ling. Saileach could heal the summons, and generate DP. Granted it's a 28sp, Single-Target heal at best, and she needs to be placed nearby them. But that ONE dragon will be almost unlikable while it has Saileach's S2 banner. Plus she also generates DP to deploy new dragons that might be lost. THAT would be a strong duo, but you can still fuck up and lose a run with only those two. And again, each super dragon costs 46 dp and 2 deployment slots. Meaning you get to use less ops for help, if you're trying to keep her dragons deployed. Ling might be strong, but she's not as braindead as Ch'alter / surtr, and I don't think she can match their DPS either. The dragons are also not as invulnerable as Mudrock, despite what the video might say.

[@FacePalmTree_]

If Zafang thinks so, I agree. If Zafang speaks, I listen. If Zafang misses, I forgive. If Zafang thinks, I admire it. If Zafang has 100 fans, I am one of them. If Zafang has 10 fans, I am one of them. If Zafang has a fan, I am that fan. If Zafang doesn't have fans, I don't exist.

[@Zafang]

new raid message

[@featherless2524]

Ling a dragon so blue, You won't think of her bo0b. Clears my stages because I'm a noob, Gives originate while drinking booze. Ling awesome dragon so blue, what would I do without you?

[@AquaticIdealist]

I've come back to this video, after finally retiring from Arknights. And this other video, even though you haven't left yet, Zafang, kind of cements your point: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3i1lIOLlsyDgZY With her Arknights isn't really a strategy game anymore, but an action one. I mean I love arcade games, but I played this for different reasons. I can't lie to myself anymore, the upcoming units are disgustingly broken, so the magic or me is gone. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, hopefully you have fun with the game, reader

[@Kokokbeluk]

Finally after 2 years without doing gacha... Edit: But fr sometimes I wish scene isn't welfare

[@edhikurniawan]

It is interesting that after being mentioned in the video, and this is your comment. LOL. Nothing wrong about it though. I'm following your channel so i kinda understand.

[@thomasn3235]

The one thing about balancing and increasing difficulty for single characters I don't like, is that it may make 4 star clears no longer possible. I personally love watching low level squads beat hard content, showing that it's still a STRATEGY game rather than just gacha luck.

[@АБКСИНТ]

Remember doktahs, there is a rule of thumb if you want to really enjoy the game. Use broken operators IF you are too frustrated and is having a bad time dealing with a certain stage.

[@tejoadi4349]

This does raise the question on bilibili ppl, its been 6 months since her release for them, why they are not sick of using her for content? If she is the most boring operator,they should already changing that, but they are still using Ling. What do they even achieve if everyone knows it that Ling can do it.

[@NihilityProxy]

There are two possible answers: 1. She's not boring. (Or at least she's cool enough to outweigh that) 2. He follows the exact same type of content creators over and over again and is surprised when they post the same stuff (Not sure, didn't check bilibili in a while)

[@Zafang]

same reason why radiant knight is used in 1p relays, and why i use spalter in specknights clears- record chasing. it's related to the community thing i mentioned at the end. when you're involved with the scene, you'll naturally want to be the one to do that optimisation even if it's not very rewarding to yourself. good points from the two above though, i do follow mostly gameplay content creators hence why i described this as a personal issue, and the clears do have some level of thought for the more optimised ones that people can enjoy

[@NihilityProxy]

@@Zafang Ling is strong. But if you look at the bigger picture, it's the natural conclusion of the archetype. The only reason why Ling seems so absurdly strong is because Magallan exists. The direct comparison in the video is proof, two summoners of same rarity but one is stronger? The other 3 summoners are exactly like Ling but have appropriate drawbacks for their rarities (Dp and Mayer don't gain more buds, Scene stuns hers, Mayer even retreats hers in exchange of aerial damage) Ling is a 6 star in an archetype that does exactly what she does but with none of the drawbacks because she should be the flagship of said archetype (Dusk has literally Gitano's skill with 0 of her problems on half the sp)

[@Zafang]

I don't necessarily disagree but it's really unfortunate that hg is at this point. I'm a big fan of previous ops: gnosis, flametail, saga etc. are all really strong but you would be hard pressed to call anyone in their classes the definitive best. ling is a true powercreep in a lot of ways, and they don't seem to be stopping that trend here

[@NihilityProxy]

@@Zafang What I'm saying is that Ling is strong but she literally embodies her archetype, what else should she do? Maggie is the only summoner that 1. Doesn't block 2. Is ranged focused 3. Has actual support gameplay. She is literally unique or at least part of an archetype that doesn't have a lower rarity counterpart like Eunectes was until Aurora came out. Ling and Magallan are not competing for the same spot even if they really look alike with Ling s2. With the penguin out of the picture is clear why Ling is the way she is, maybe her numbers are overturned but anything else is expecting too much from a class that is very straightforward. Block and hope your summons have bigger stats than the enemy

[@surreal9239]

Your scaling enemy difficulty point is the most important point you bring up in this video imo. Great video.

[@YuuTheShikigami]

"Now everytime i see clears, we see a race for who can post first a Ling clear" so, the same thing that happened with Skalter, who even if she isn't the main carry, is on almost all clears

[@Zinras]

Tbh, I'm not particularly concerned about it because people who care will do it anyway and there are so many options for content creators to get the wider community into it if they want to (eg. competitions, Discord rooms dedicated to it, challenges issued to other content creators etc.). As a newer player, I'm far more concerned with the mountains of content that basically boils down to "just borrow X at E2 Mastery 3" for Anni and CC as if I don't want to clear it myself with my own units. I think that's far worse in forcing people on the Path to Efficiency, rather than the Path to Fun.

[@arcana5625]

Ling is literally every single operator in one. Jack of all trades, master of all trades.

[@user-tj9fj6zr3b]

I'll still bring surtr just to be suretr

[@lameproguy5970]

I hope skalter passive and s2 works on her too, so I can play braindead summonerknights

[@chaook]

For me personally, the fact that I don't have every broken option at hand, and the fact that there are so many Ling clears as well as hate and love for her makes me want to pull her super hard to see what was all the ruckus. Also sometimes you just want to see the world burn at farting dragons and the shing shings

[@KhadiPlays]

and did you get her?

[@chaook]

@@KhadiPlays 5 consecutive Lings, not to mention first and second ones 2 pulls apart at 38 and 41. Still have my screenshots. Can't believe my own luck.

[@KhadiPlays]

@@chaook damn man nice, I got my Ling in my 28 pull then I had to go for 133 for Lee. Was not fun xD

[@chaook]

@@KhadiPlays ah well such is the nature of gacha. How're you holding up in the event btw?

[@KhadiPlays]

@@chaook good, doing the ex maps atm, trying not to use guides, I have tons of goods ops raised but being able to brain to use them is a whole another matter lmao. How is it for you?

[@prinz3237]

After 9 years in development, hopefully it would have been worth the wait.

[@insertnamehere9200]

Well, not anymore

[@DoumanAsh]

what a salt

[@Bakagii]

idk man I love being op so ling's my cup of tea

[@legrandretour5524]

No more defender

[@PitangerTrad]

Don't care, will pull and get her. Twice.

[@mugenniutsubyo3103]

Thank god i pulled blue dragon mommy

[@chololord6934]

Thanks for this video, really changed my perspective I was gonna just go for a single copy, but I'm gonna go for her tokens now. Imagine getting this mad about people summoning for a character in a PvE game. It's really wild that your entire argument boils down to "Don't summon for her, cuz she's gonna make me unable to watch other char clears on some random website". Grow up

[@skadi5196]

"I was gonna just go for a single copy, but I'm gonna go for her tokens now" Imagine getting so upset that you base what you gonna do in a PvE game watching a video off the internet. It's really wild that your argument boils down to "My mom told me to drink milk, so I'm not gonna drink milk". Grow up.

[@CheeseInvader]

@@skadi5196 Let me tell you the some of the secrets of the internet! it's not because someone is saying they are going to do something, that they are actually going to do it! So in truth, he isn't really that mad and he's not going to go for her tokens because of the video! yeah.... I know....Crazy right?

[@skadi5196]

​@@CheeseInvader I was merely jesting at the absolute stupidity in the person's comment. Let me dumb it down. The person went against the entire point they were making on the first line of the comment. Whether they will actually do it or not is irrelevant. Yeah.....pretty crazy.

[@Gojiradogzillagodzilla]

please no trash talk my blue woman, me smol brain me need her to clear game 😔

[@ThofuGear]

I just got back in to arknights and got two Lings from the free 10-roll, guess I'm raising her now

[@abdulqayyum-ct4to]

im brain-dead player. if the stages too crazy i gonna take the easy way

[@Piquliar]

I think that the best way to define Ling is: the only operator operator that would make the average rarity abusing meta-slave notice her and actually want to use her over the standard braindead 'META' team composition. They tried to make a summoner that would appeal to everyone as the majority of players probably never even touch summoners in regular content. It's akin to the amount of power and utility they had to give Radknight to make people want to roll for and use a dreadnought but in this case it's a notably wider gap as summoners are supposed to dominate most of a map. Perhaps they wanted to pay homage to their Chinese Heritage with a dragon that people would be drawn to for more than just the design like Dusk and Nian but be in awe of her power. Idk, I'm just speculating as the dragon is the symbol of absolute power in China so it does seem fitting in a sense not that that translates to a reasonably balanced operator in a game lol.

[@pedromonteiro1196]

"They tried to make a summoner that would appeal to everyone as the majority of players probably never even touch summoners in regular content." Not disagreeing with your take but, the minority that already used to play with summoners will know to thank the limited blue woman every time the game is especially harsh on summoners (not that there was much incidents like that, but that "tripled costs for summons" was the most egregious example)

[@Piquliar]

@@pedromonteiro1196 I agree. That is clearly a response to prevent people from cheesing CC with her ez refresh walls of stats that hurt all the rest of the summoners. I don't like that one bit. Nothing should be balanced around limited operators and if you feel you should balance around a limited operator because they're too powerful, you should have balanced them before releasing them in the first place smh.

[@h1302mm]

@@pedromonteiro1196 Triple summon cost was only a tag *after* ling was added, meant to nerf her. If they were already playing with summons I imagine it would be wildly frustrating to have the best of the class bring down everybody else.

[@pedromonteiro1196]

@@h1302mm because of ones mistake, everybody will pay the price

[@xXVibrantSnowXx]

She is indeed so broken, especially in IS2, it makes it looks like a joke when compared to other operators, i mean anyone in that mode can almost be but Ling, she is just over broken

[@kstandsforpotassium9197]

so you hate women, i see. jokes aside, i get your point, it's definitely a bitter feeling when community content turns so repetetive. when it comes to clears i experience them from a mostly different angle as i'm an avid nicheknights enjoyer, but i really do hope the global fandom can still see the game beyond the blue woman. all that being said: i am going all in for ling. i'm a casual player and dont have the patience nor time to optimize stages, and i joined when she was just released for global- and i fell in love immediately. all sui siblings are very dear to me and i'm super invested in their lore, but at the end of the day i am but a simple lesbian and i make decisions with my pussy. drunkard immortal hot.

[@omniscientcommenter3271]

I didn’t even know she was so broken in Arknights I just pulled for cause she was beautiful (Just so you know I was new to the game when I first saw her)took me 20 pulls to get her so yeah lol.

[@iceghoul_kaneki5477]

I definitely agree that ling is brain dead broken. Personally I have no interest in ling. I'm pulling the invitation to wine banner to get a full pot blacknight she looks like a really fun operator, and she has synergie with blemishine which is reason enough to pull for her. I'm saving for Golden glow she's my most anticipated operator.

[@stormguy952]

really detailed and insightful video zafJAM

[@ZAYKONN]

"Anything is possible if you drink enough sake." - Ling, probably

[@MadIIMike]

I don't want to sound mean, but my views are pretty much the polar opposite of yours. The whole record chasing thing seems like some sort of copium for people that want to dump their money on pulls, because quite obviously you don't need all ops and/or pots for normal gameplay. Even CC has nothing locked behind risks above 18. Same goes for Nicheknights, some people do it because they like a challenge for themselfes (which I respect), but some go nuts over some pseudo archivements nobody cares about and chase max pots for it. No F2P player or "reasonable" spender would be close to have every 6* even at pot 1 AND have them, as well as relevant 4/5* operators maxed even if they started on Day 1. And even if you make a record on Day 1 of a event release, chances are people would still have done it 6 months ago on the CN server. So frankly, many of those records have as much value as "first" comments on youtube. You go on about Ling being OP/Broken, but the 2nd highest rated operator in the default sorting of that Arkrec site is Scene. Deepcolour, Mayer Magallan and Dorothy share the 3rd Tier with Chalter. So the only 5* Summoner who's Summons are supposed to stay is rated higher than Chalter and the 4* of this type is rated the same as Chalter and the 6* with more temporary/no block summons. So it's by default Ling would have topped those charts if the 4* of the type is rated the same tier as chalter and the 5* one tier higher. It's quite simple logic tbh, a summoner with summons that take deployment slots and a fair amount of dp needs summons comparable in strength to operators people use, otherwise the average player will use operators instead of summons. If your measure of quality is number of operators used, then it's a summoner's job to top the charts and it's more of an issue of other summoners being too weak in comparsion if they don't break charts based on it. Hypothetically, imagine Deepcolor wouldn't summon tentacles but e1 max Melanthas, her potential would be multiple times as high as currently, yet your typical "record clears" will usually not involve Melantha.

[@Joshuamiller19570]

She's a Dragon like Nian and Dusk, Isn't that more then enough reason to want her? Who cares if she's busted, I love Chen/Summer Chen, And I don't even use her in every Stage, Silverash is honestly the only Operator that consistently gets put in most of my Squads, Mainly because of that really nice Passive. I love Passives in Games, Especially Global ones that help the whole team, It's the reason why people like Ptilopsis so much, That SP Regen. Just because Ling is "Broken" doesn't mean people will use her everywhere. "Unless they are lazy as heck" and don't even get me started on how Surtr/Thorns aren't even broken Operators, They are VERY strong, But the limitations on both of them are quite reasonable. Thorns needs to activate his Skill twice, Which WOULD be easy if you brought Chen to the Squad, But it's a pretty tough thing to do in some Stages nonetheless, And Surtr can't hit range enemies, Can only hit enemies DIRECTLY in front of her, And only has 1 Block, Sure she may be literally unkillable with her Skill 3, Which is really great against Bosses, Either to stall them, Or deal big dmg to them, But her limits are there. "If Surtr could hit Ranged Enemies, Or had Range Similar to Thorns/Silverash, THEN I would 100% say she's broken lmao" Lings "Limitations" are the same ones I have with ALL Solo attempt/clear Operators, I don't like them, Whats the point of going into a Stage and only using 1 Operator? Sure it's interesting in concept, But there's 100s of Operators in the Game to use for fun, I really dislike the mindset of trying to Solo a Stage with just 1 Operator, I will ALWAYS do it with a full Squad, And mixing and matching who I put in that Squad is some of the most fun I have in the Game. I will be pulling for Ling because she's pretty, And I want to try and get all of the Dragons if possible, "I do have Nian and Dusk btw lol" But like all of the other Summoners I own, I'm only going to be using her for a solid 1-2 Summons for her Dragons, She's going to be part of a Squad, She's not gonna be the center focus of it. I admit that Ling doesn't seem to have any weaknesses like any other Operator in the Game, And don't see why she's given so MANY Dragons to summon, If I were to nerf her I'd limit the amount of Dragons she could Summon in general, Like 2 big ones/4 small ones max or something. But this isn't going to take away any enjoyment I have from using her, "If and when I do decide too" And I hope you all enjoy using her just as much as I will o/ "If I can get her lmao" "Edit: Just thought I'd mention it here, I ended up getting her within 100 Pulls! She's pretty fun to use so far, But yeah I've never used more then 2 of her Dragons at a time"

[@SilverGlenn69]

I don't care about the meta, I just want my Nian Sisters Completed

[@Piquliar]

As much as I love her design and character. I agree that she looks kinda boring in gameplay. Her S3 is powerful but it's not the most visually impressive skill and I'm kinda sadge lol. Her S2 does look pretty fun tho. I don't understand why Ling has hijacked the Bilibili content scene so much tho. I mean she's like 6 months old at this point. Aren't people sick of seeing the same thing over and over again just with different stages? Drop Ling, drop dragon, fuse dragon. Sure, it'll be super cool the first few times but I feel like that whole schtick will get long in the tooth at some point right? My absolute favorite content is 1-OP relays seeing all the super flashy skills, hearing the variety of accompanying sounds and just being slack-jawed and in awe half the time at the precision and practice required to pull it off. 1-tile only is in a similar vein but seeing the same super powered operator being used in the same general way....ehhh. Maybe it's my short attention span but it seems like they're obsessed with Ling over there as creators stick with what gets them views generally speaking so the viewers must love her (understandable but too much of a good thing no?). That summon tag in CC is certainly concerning tho. I'll be keeping an eye out for overt balancing around limited operators in general content and up to R18CC at the very least.

[@dedcet634]

well not as stupidly broken as chalter but i still need her because i like nian sister and yugioh

[@Amahankage2004]

Im honestly just rolling cuz shes cute, limited and her skills are a bit interesting, im totally endgame and probably will build her and just use her from time to time lol.

[@secretscarlet8249]

Lalala, I'm not listening to you~! For real though, I'm a busy adult and I play AK for fun. AK does require you to use your brain, but having meta ops is nice when you want to just enjoy the feeling of victory without working hard.

[@m54269]

my tiny smoll brain plans to use ling and skalter on every stage 🤔

[@gaelx3d674]

I actually didn't knew about 7-18 absolute Solo no lancet, that was actually amazing! The timings were quite tight and only full pot can do it but lmaooo her S2 is amazing

[@STREEEEEET]

I think this is a little overreaction. She is definitely strong but not game breaking. Some stages are easier with your healer tank combo due to dragons dying and leaking because you can't heal them. I think she is waaaaay more valuable for new players like myself who end up having a one man army but complete roasters she is just one more. I do agree that I AM missing out a lot by bringing her everywhere. I've been hurting myself insofar i don't know how to play without her right now.

[@ReCrystX]

I agree with the last reason. I literally begged OblyObly (supporter player on kr) to not use Ling too much even if she's the most optimal way. What I love about Arknights is that stages can be cleared in a variety way, I get to see many strats that I would've never think of. I hope that people will stay true to their gameplay.

[@Xi_Vi]

I don’t know him/her but as a fellow summonerknights dokutah, I don’t think he’ll be using ling’s S3 too much (maybe S1 and S2). Summonerknights like to suffer and take pride for their clears with summoners; ling’s S3 doesn’t satisfy us (unless if its genuinely impressive) (not that anyone using Ling’s S3 is bad)

[@-Kidzin]

Ye i actually really don't like that playstyle, my favourite thing in AK are various synergies between operators so just having one chick be able to do almost everything by herself is just meh Of course still pulled for her because waifu>meta and I like her design a lot.

[@waridrifansyah182]

She not afk or lazzy operator i don't like it

[@Safir-dl9xr]

for me i have reason why i want her first because i dont have surtr and chalter second i dont have any of the dragon sisters(i really want one of the dragon sisters T.T)

[@LeeLee-sf1sh]

Wow no way finally the L*ng video good job zafart 👍

[@darkxl2008]

Thanks to say i should pull for Ling

[@freemeraldmarbl]

Ngl I love my summoners (I have scene E1’d and Deepcolor E2’d, don’t have the others yet.) But yeah, Ling is stupid broken, there’s a reason a No Ling category is needed. Ling just does, a bit too much on her own. However, putting her in a full squad where you’re actually planning to leave the other ops on the battlefield is just being dumb, so anyone please don’t do that.

[@CheeseInvader]

I'm planning to do that, and no one is going to stop me!