Meta and Powercreep | TC Roundtable Podcast #22

[@maevethefox5912]

The thing I find with metas, especially in PVP but in Genshin as well, is that so often the "meta" teams are really poorly understood by the majority of players, and/or don't translate well to lower levels of play. I was a world championship level TCG player a few years ago. I was one of about a dozen players that functionally built the meta. Lower level players would get my deck lists, and take them into low ELO play, and be baffled that they didn't immediately steamroll, but the top level decks a) required a LOT of game knowledge to hit their win conditions efficiently, b) were loaded with counters to tricks that you would never see at low level. Conversely, I ended up getting smashed in an event by a seemingly terrible aggro build that you could never climb out of mid-ELO with, but one of my friends realized that so many of the top players had gone so long without having seen that sort of play that our decks couldn't ramp up fast enough to cope with being bum rushed. I guess what I'm getting at is that knowing how to build and understanding how to play are very different scenarios. I'm a reasonable team builder but I am *not* a good player on field. A Hu Tao/Furina team is 100% better in every possible meta sense than my Yae/Kirara aggravate team, but I can 36 star easily with Yae, and couldn't clear 11-3 trying to use my friend's Tao team. Ultimately, this game can be "won" in any way that matters, so many different ways, and your personal play style and ability means so much more than who clears 20 seconds faster on paper.

[@brodericksiz625]

I used to be a decent player in a TCG myself: I followed very closely the meta, analysed the data of how often certain decks and cards would be played in the game, tested decks of my preferred types extensively, tweaked often which techs I would run depending on how the usage rate shifted, you know, the basics. After a few months, I had a solid enough grasp of the meta that I started building my own decks rather than netdecking, and my success rate actually grew. The one time I partecipated to an online tournament, I was scheduled to face a streamer in the very first match, he even asked me permission to stream the match, which I granted. I used my own home-brew decks against him and caught him off-guard, because he played against me the way he would have played against any regular mid-tier online player, not suspecting that I was actually pulling off some wacky, yet well reasoned, combinations that you wouldn't see often. I won against him and eliminated him, despite him being one of the favoured ones to win the tournament. After that, the adrenaline got the best of me and made bad matching choices on my next match, so I ended up being eliminated on the second round. I think that, if I continued playing and got more used to the excitation of the competition, I may have become a pretty solid player, but that was the last time I participated to a tournament. Anyway, my point is that knowledge of the meta can enable creative play rather than stifle it, despite the fact that a lot of people seem to think that following the meta is simply being a "meta slave". My own experience taught me how fun it can be to understand a game's meta and knowing how to get creative with it, which is why I always follow the meta of any game I'm into that has one

[@maevethefox5912]

@@brodericksiz625 Definitely know that feeling, I think I peaked at like 8th in the world, I dominated a lot of ladder play but I always tried to get too cute in the big events. I did help a long time world #1 with deck refinement, but I have always been more creative than consistent. My biggest flaw was getting bored playing the same thing over and over and it would lead to some ill-advised changes just for the sake of changing. I've also been a tournament level 40k player and I absolutely made my bread on just building weird counter meta stuff. You could kind of operate on the knowledge that people would come in with misunderstood netlists and just build around picking them apart. I had one guy actually throw a model and just leave the venue because I was beating him with "some trash trick list" that was actually really straightforward, just used pieces that dedicated netlisters would never have had to consider. I guess I've always thrived on just getting creative and trying to do weird things with misunderstood pieces. Genshin is a bit trickier because it's not like you can just pull a functional Candace off the shelf and see if she fits, you've gotta actually invest in them, but I still get way more joy out of building like ... DPS reverse melt Shenhe than I ever would building a Nahida hyperbloom core

[@godo2712]

i feel like looking for "how does it work" should be a logical step after looking for meta Be it TCG or a build for rpg game, after looking for decklist/build, my next step is to look for explanation how this deck/build works, and then footage with examples I imagine the face of a player when you hand him Predaplant with few engines and tell him "do me a turn 3 OTK"

[@archiegriffs]

Aside from me being a decent hu tao player, all of my holy shit I love this team for the abyss teams are the wackier or unconventional ones or ones with a lot more defensive utility built in, I'm way too used to autopiloting abyss nowadays. I really have good luck with sunfire comps for whatever reason, another one is Furina/Yae/Nahida/Jean (I think a couple other healers can work for that slot): it's such a stupidly easy comp to play that no one talks about too much and can deal with multi wave content, single target, content with short damage phases etc. and has enough variation in where the damage is coming from that it doesn't struggle too much against most enemies hard counters to certain teams.

[@gingervald8601]

I used to play smash melee competitively and pretty early on found a got better tournament results with Luigi and Ganondorf than I did with any top tier character. Part of it is that as less a player of a less common character I almost always have a matchup knowledge advantage, but also the playstyles are much more intuitive to me. Especially Ganondorf. He has big hitboxes that take up a lot of space and hit HARD. If I have an idea of where my opponent is going to go I can knock them away, take control of center stage, and abuse positioning to force them into another meaty hit. I can do that, and I have fun doing that and none of melee's top tiers do that quite like Ganon does.

[@crt137]

I think they pre-emptively made Neuvillette really good due to lore reasons, similar to how people expect the Archons to be strong. At least looking at Wriothesley and Navia, it doesn't seem to be a trend. Furina was surprisingly well designed, she didn't raise the ceiling too much (Hu Tao, Neuvillette) but man, did she do wonders for some characters like Noelle and Jean, who were kind of non-existent before.

[@sefjo5223]

Neuvilette’s powercreep is that fidget speeeeeeenn. Basically dethrones all AoE chars at higher investment.

[@danielhertz1984]

@@sefjo5223 the devs probably one patch before: no they won't abuse it anyway, put it in the game

[@Syokool]

I think it's more like, "hey new friend, do you wanna try genshin? Take this OP char so you can easily go through everything b4 feeling weak". Neuvillete is pretty awesome, but far from "meta". He's a meta in itself so you can try building characters right around him or in the standard way. No one having him will toss away other characters, even with his absurd kit, bc he also synergies well with genshin overall elemental reaction meta, and still make some old or rarely used characters more relevant.

[@StanTheWoz]

Personally I do think Neuvillette is a little too strong, it makes some other characters feel worse in comparison. Especially since he has such good damage while also being generally the best element for reaction teams. Furina is fine though, even though she's arguably a better unit, because of how much she works WITH other characters and in particular some generally weaker ones.

[@SelikBzdy]

As much as I am glad that Jean and Noelle found their place in the meta, I don't really like what they did with Furina. She is too much of a "must have" unit. We have an upcoming release of Xianyun and Furina is her best teammate to the point that if you don't have her, Xianyun value really drops down significantly.

[@kanoaika]

The understanding and use of 'meta' knowledge is one of my biggest frustrations with the Genshin community. The gap between the understanding of actual TC people (i.e. all the people who have the skills, game knowledge, and desire to accurately evaluate things for themselves) and basically everyone else is enormous. In the TC community basically everyone has at least a baseline appreciation for how important the starting assumptions are for determining what conclusions you come to. But as the conclusions (even if they are originally well qualified and covered in disclaimers) gradually trickle down into the rest of the community, the nuance and context gets thrown away and people eventually just use it to try to justify why their subjectively favorite character is 'objectively' better™ than some other character (and often by extension why they are better than people who use other characters). (And that is even the better situation where they are actually at least based in a good analysis somewhere down the line.) On the other side, I am still glad that at least within the TC community, people have a better understanding of the true complexity of 'meta' in a game like Genshin.

[@Syokool]

If you have played other games years ago, meta didn't even mean anything bc it was end game the actual definition of what ppl call today meta. Then they changed it for a sort of "temporary end game" so it isn't that difficult to understand what ppl think about meta. But then again, ppl looking for "meta" is actually looking for more challenging content, but then again that's not what meta means, nor end game. In genshin, differently than other games, meta and end game lose their meaning bc it's a game "at yourself own pace", doesn't have pvp nor group activities so it's not important to change mechanics, power, etc. What genshin needs is more activities bases on seniority. Like infinite abyss or towers, high challenge domains, etc.

[@falstroemeria]

The trickling down is when things get lost in translation. Its extremely important to talk about in what context. Which is why I appreciate when Artesians goes around the room with the question along the lines of what is meta to them

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

​@@Syokool I feel like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "meta." Meta stands for "most effective tactic available." The fact that metas exist and evolve actually has very little to do with PvP or needing to change mechanics. As long as there are mechanics and choices to be made, meta will emerge. As long as people can learn and improve, meta will evolve. Endgame is about the playable content in the game. Meta has never referred to playable content. It's always been about player choices and strategies. Generally, when people use "Meta" in genshin, they're talking about either in the context of "How can I get the most out of this character" or "How can I make the best (definition of best varies) team for x content?". This means that "meta" for one account will look different than another account, or for different people depending on their skill levels. Infinite abyss and higher challenge domains would not "give meaning" to meta, they would just have their own different meta.

[@kanoaika]

​@@Syokool At least in my opinion, that is an overly restrictive definition. Meta is about optimization of game-play to reach a goal. While 'meta' is most widespread (as in focused on and understood by a large proportion of players) in games that provide and focus on relatively challenging objectives (for example with Genshin the vast majority of regular players don't understand or care about meta whereas with Chess you probably won't find anyone who identifies as a 'chess player' who hasn't studied the 'meta' at all). While I think extending the game to add (optional) harder and more varied combat content in addition to what we already have would be great, I don't think that it will fundamentally change how the rest of the community understands it, make it much more popular (i.e. normal people who don't care now probably won't care regardless), or have much of an effect at all other than giving us more goals to optimize for. Personally, I don't think about meta, do TC, experiment, research, or make programs for optimizing the game because the game is inherently hard and it forces me to, but rather because I just enjoy thinking, learning, and optimizing things. I find my own goals to achieve and optimize.

[@kanoaika]

​@@undeniablySomeGuy Lol I never heard people try to turn 'meta' into an acronym until today. I defiantly prefer the definition of meta in terms of the prefix 'meta-' (referring to something that is self-referential). So basically rather than referring to some hypothetical 'best theory' meta is an abbreviation of meta-strategy or meta-tactics (or something similar). In other words: meta is the study/comparison of different strategies to find the best ones for a given situation (less so the tactics themselves). Although I will admit that the acronym (probably backronym lol) is probably a much better way to introduce it to people who don't have a background in academia/science even if it is a little more simplistic, so I have no problems if people use it as well.

[@Memecs20]

43:20 It's one of the aspects of TC I like the most, team building many options to squeeze as much synergy/damage possible from niche interactions.

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

Bain-marie moment

[@bhellzeboss7541]

I believe the real reason why ppl defend their bad unit is because ppl keep on call them bad. No one say eula is mid, or that she is ok, anyone say she is trash. So at some point you are going to start answer back. This is not a pvp game, it's not like we don't have very very bad unit (alloy for example). But there is a very strong difference between a character who is mid to a trash one, and it's not given by the competition, but by the challange. So just stop calling unit trash and maybe ppl will not be so ready to fight back.

[@nightday2030]

Eula is like put in her own category. She is still the best and strongest option for those who want to bring the Physical damage to the next level. Physical are niche but there are at least some fanbase who enjoy them.

[@Michael_Apollo]

i like fights

[@purplerainPR]

in the modern world we live in a black and white society so dont be surprised when ppl cant find middle ground. they dont stop me from using Diluc almost every abyss, or trying nahida on a Eula/raiden team.

[@bhellzeboss7541]

@@purplerainPR I mean... You can use Raiden as the proc for hyperbloom in that comp. Still that's not the point The point is ppl don't understand that in a non pvp game with no form of competition the difference between 100 score and 90 score is not the same you have in pvp game, where the meta crash the competition and you lose if you don't. Also even weaker unit have their time to shine sometime. It's just the mindset of some ppl.

[@silentmat2029]

The root of this problem is that Hoyo releases some characters in a bad state, only to elevate their effectiveness through band-aid fixes. Many players use the teams and resources they have during the time of a character's release to evaluate their power/effectiveness. Therefore, the debate ensues when a new artifact or character releases to buff said 'bad state' characters. Then, the evaluations get mixed up between different timelines and variables. This in turn begs the question: "Is the character good when first released?" or "Is the character good when they synergize well with new characters and artifacts?" Players roll for characters they want as is and should be content with their power/effectiveness on release. Sure there can be improvements to the character later, but rolling for characters with the uncertainty they will become better in the future is hideous. Players shouldn't be gambling on this uncertainty. Overall, the opinions of players depend on the time of evaluation, consequently causing debate.

[@spacekettle2478]

I LOVE that event where you get to fight souped up bosses without time limit, but crazy damage and HP pools and mechanics for the bosses and it's just an endurance match.

[@MrGshinobi]

Where can i find the wallpapers that Artesians uses? they're gorgeous man

[@sIimepoop]

Wallpaper engine

[@Pingpong009]

@@sIimepoopit looks like its paid ;-;

[@tradingcomparisons6591]

Literally came to the comments to look for it

[@HWQFish]

Same

[@planetary-rendez-vous]

Guys wallpaper engine is paid but pretty cheap for the amount of goodies you'll get. :D

[@Garmenides]

While is true that Mihoyo kept the powercreep in check, there are some tricks for that: one being making 4 stars subDPS/supports worse than the 1.1 ones, or making them so niche that a generalist support/subDPS is simply better for the team. With more subDPS/supports as powerful as the 1.1, the powercreep would have raised a lot.

[@StanTheWoz]

The conversation about constellations is one that I think gets glossed over way too often, appreciate you guys talking about it. IMO the fair point of comparison to a C0 five star is C2 four stars. Not everyone is going to have them and some will have more, but it's about the same amount of investment. I go a little crazy when I see people just assuming C6 four stars ranked compared to C0 five stars in their tier lists or whatever. Really contributes to overrating certain characters IMO, Kujou Sara, Faruzan, Xingqiu compared to Yelan, etc.

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

it's just inherently very cumbersome to discuss character strength around 4*s and constellations. talking about all of them takes so long, and certain character constellations have had higher levels of availability (store + lantern rite) so different assumptions should be made about how many people have them. so it's like... hard

[@cedrusnguyen5188]

Sara and Faruzan I can understand. But Xingqiu, he is offered in the Lanturn Rite event every year, appear in shop twice per year and sometime given for free in event like in 2.5. He is one of the easiest character to C6 if you want to have a reliable off field Hydro applicator, which is a need for almost every other team in the game. If you play from the start, you can already get a C6 Xingqiu without ever pulling him even once.

[@luminous3558]

@@cedrusnguyen5188 new players wont have that luxury and they need advice the most. Long term players already have teams on their account that can clear.

[@StanTheWoz]

@@cedrusnguyen5188 but that doesn't help new players. Sure, if you've been playing since 1.0, you probably have a lot of the launch 4 stars at C6 already. But anyone who started more recently may not. As someone who started in 2.3 and was scrambling trying to figure out what was good at the time, I can tell you it was made far more difficult by the distortion both 4 and 5 star constellations had on community perception of units. TC shouldn't just be for launch players. Would I *recommend* going for C6 Xingqiu over time to people who want to play the meta? Yes, probably. But that doesn't mean they'll all have that.

[@minatoarisato7652]

@@cedrusnguyen5188 Assuming people aren't rolling banners specifically for xq and (really) hoping for the best, especially as featured banners get increasingly diluted with more 4 stars mixed in, that means c6 xq is acquired sometime after your 2nd year of playing if just going for freebies. That also means you may not have resources like starglitter to get other 4 star 1.0 con characters and you don't choose xiangling cons instead on lanturn rite. If modern TC'ing wants to help more players who actually need help (clearing the abyss as that's only actual tangible benefit from TC's in this game), then they need to start acknowledging that their recommendations can't be based off of character's potentials that take years to build. At one point in a podcast responding the "anxiety" article, zajeff mentioned that his channel was for people clearing abyss for the first time. That feels incredibly off the mark nowadays.

[@minatoarisato7652]

It's strange to see the acknowledgement that c6 1.0 4 stars can be difficult to obtain from TCs, and yet it's the base line for team recommendations from content creators.

[@kenkakuknight]

As a proud owner of a C7 Qiqi, her time to enter the meta is finally here!

[@KrisPBacon69]

Sadly nope, unless they make an artifact set that only she can utilize, she will never be one of the best options because all she does is heal and nothing else lmao

[@kenkakuknight]

@@KrisPBacon69 I was being facetious, learn to recognize a joke.

[@KrisPBacon69]

@@kenkakuknight Ok now looking at the comment again, I don't know how I didn't see that was a joke lmao, sorry about that

[@kenkakuknight]

@@KrisPBacon69 water under the bridge, friend!

[@emmanuel_40]

Just need a boss that 1 shots your on field character in the first 3 seconds.

[@italomorais9424]

Just one thing that i like to point out. On 1.0 days you could clear one side of the abyss with jean's fall dmg.

[@GlacierRain]

thank you guys for taking the time for a podcast

[@ArthurVingot]

The one thing that really bothers me is when I watch an Ayato guide and the guy goes "Neuvillette is better in every way". My dude, I'm watching an Ayato guide to know how to play Ayato, not looking for alternatives!

[@TheRedEyeChannel]

@Zajef77 Meta doesn't actually mean 'the study of' it's the concept of something done outside of or beyond the existance of whatever it's meta-ing. Meta-gaming is the game played outside the game. It has little sense in something like genshin, but think of something like a pick-ban scenario where you use outside game knowledge to influence your decisions. Banning a character that you know the opponent is good with. It's not actually a game decision based on the actual game itself, but a game played outside the game. Or in card games where there's a known dominant deck, and you choose to play a weaker deck that has a better matchup over the the known meta-deck. After that, it then evolved to the common usage of 'Most Effective Tactics Available'.

[@loyalfan99]

It's nice to hear people who seriously play genshin discuss about all of this but in reality there are casuals like me or those who have more demanding day jobs or just aren't really interested in "winning" genshin.

[@RPZSTA]

Meta doesnt matter when there is no end game or some super serious competitive rewards. That is a GOOD thing for Genshin. If this was like any other gacha characters would be phased out every patch or two.

[@wabalabavxx]

I feel like TC related to stats and artifacts have become quite stagnant, just like warframe loadouts. where you'll have to build all the characters in the same fashion to get the optimal damage. yeah just build ADC or HDC or even EDC, just like slapping on same 6 mods on every unit. though fontaine did changed some things, in the end crit still reigns supreme.

[@DjFashay]

Kinda disagree. Well, aside from crit (lol), but both sands and goblets are pretty versatile to the point where at least for me the optimal artifacts change all the time depending on what team I slot a character in. The main stats for those two pieces are not set in stone at all - weapons, artifact sets and substats all can lead to a main stat outperforming another.

[@Syokool]

That's actually incorrect. You get that idea from swapping artifacts that, after lots of months of farming, are the best you've got, but you ignore the other sets effects and compare them as they don't do much more of what yours do. This is one of the mistakes everyone do in probability, and it's assuming incorrect situations from incorrect assumptions. For example, ppl thought Hutao only scales with cd cr as any other carry, so it was useless other sets and the correct choice is actually looking for EM bc she will be vaporizing stuff. Unless you compare some feedback cases where characters can swap artifacts, you will realize that each one have different needs and ppl tend to be very lazy looking for each character set.

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

​@@Syokool I mean that's not very different to what they were saying. Lots of casual players like to say "you're just not building X right!" but like wablabvxx said, there really isn't that much expression in builds. Beyond the sands and *sometimes* the goblet, you don't really get to express that much more. It rarely deviates from just choosing the right sands then packing as much crit you can get while hitting your ER requirements. Very few damaging characters actually are in a position where any other choice is better than their dmg goblet, and even when they are, it's usually less than 2-3 substat rolls difference. Sure, sometimes you have full EM characters or supports/healers that don't deal damage, but then you just stack the stat that gives them their buff and go er the rest of the way. It's not exactly complicated stuff to make sure the artifact main stat matches the talent stat. As long as you do that with a team of characters, you can basically clear. Once people have a basic understanding of which main stat to put on their sands, the difference between a bad and a good build is just substat luck. Which is usually just crit luck. You're saying people "overlook" certain sets, but that hasn't really been true in years. People use the optimizer, and even if the set is unexpected, they'll probably just take the recommendation, and they'll generally be right, assuming they were optimizing for the correct thing.

[@deathmetalalchemist5861]

It's not so much "optimal" it's "close enough to optimal that other options don't matter that much"...like WF, using the same 6-8 mods on a weapon may not be it's most optimal setup, but it's close enough that why bother to optimize further since you already clear everything with ease...same with Genshin, who cares that crit may not be the absolute most optimal always or that an Atk% goblet may be better sometimes, your normal ADC (or HP or EM depending on what they scale with) build clears everything

[@msssmystery]

9:12 that's me, I played the first 6 months with Zhongli and I can't, for the life of me, remember most of the bosses attack patterns 12:36 yesss the gacha didn't give me one sucrose in two years of playing. I even wished on her banners, more than 100 wishes overall.

[@glovs4188]

Just basing on the comment section. Meta for the genshin community specifically means the highest single target dps team vs. A non moving totem pole enemy with no aura or shield and doesnt fight back.

[@sefjo5223]

Nah its better to be like how can I make my favorite character do funny number better

[@glovs4188]

@@sefjo5223 i agree. It's just that's tge way genshin community generaly see it.

[@isgonnabeagreatyear]

so we just need to assume that without IR you just do 0 dps and thus you must have a shield or use xq, got it

[@StanTheWoz]

22:00 that's because in League, Starcraft, Smash, whatever, these games are competitive. Your main being weak is an excuse for losing! "It's not because I'm bad, I'm great, my main just sucks, the other guy picked a stronger character". Genshin isn't competitive so it doesn't have that. Instead people want to justify the money and/or potentially months of time spent grinding to invest in their favorites. Most of this is subconscious of course.

[@theaudiocrat]

5:20 I had given up hope that anyone would ever say this. The concept of "meta" was always short for "metagame" which is to say, "the game OF the game". If you play rock paper scissors, and everyone plays scissors, you use the term meta to refer to the decision of the player to use scissors and your corresponding decision to use rock as a counter-strategy. It really doesnt make sense in the context of noncompetitive gaming because it refers to the decisions people make when presented with a limited resource pool and (ideally) symmetrically viable strategies. It really originated in the Magic the Gathering tournament scene in the 1990s and spread to other games shortly thereafter. Source: I was there

[@MrGshinobi]

Personally i only started to care about meta to make the characters i want to play stronger, i typically refuse to pull or build any character that i dislike in the story or lore, with the exception that i will build a character i dislike ONLY if they make the characters i do like stronger (im looking at you bennett, xiangling and xingqiu) Nowadays my day 1 account is so cracked that i have the luxury of only pulling for characters that i like and kind of ignoring meta unless it's directly connected to my goal of collecting all the cool anime characters that i want in the game, for example even tho geo sucks balls i love navia in the archon quests and i'm planning to roll for her and her weapon and to follow meta to make her as strong as she can be because i like her :) Same thing goes for other characters that people tought were weak but i liked them so i rolled, like for example yae, kokomi, dehya, zhongli, etc. I like them, so i roll for them, and i suppose a lot of people have that experience as well.

[@juggernaut6666]

That's the only reason I'm thinking about getting Ayaka. I do not like her at all, but I love Shenhe so now I'm torn on should I get Ayaka.

[@dickcheesemcgee2375]

Yeah after getting like 4-5 core characters, the game just becomes an artifact game instead of a characters game, if you have good enough artifacts, you can easily clear Abyss with anything and you can entirely ignore meta. My Dendro-less, Furina-less account can probably clear abyss faster than the majority of players simply because I haul my ass towards the artifact domains every day.

[@Axterix13]

@@juggernaut6666 Just get Wrizzy instead.

[@dot2604]

@@juggernaut6666 try reverse melt with kaeya

[@MrGshinobi]

@@juggernaut6666 ayaka is really good tho, id say go for it

[@DMurdock]

Let me clarify the real meaning of meta. In most competitive activities (sports, games, war, etc.), a dominant strategy will eventually surface. Then someone will create a strategy to specifically counter that dominant strategy, at the cost of being ineffective against some of the less dominant strategies, creating this rock-paper-scissor effect. So within the game, there exists another game where you try to figure out who's using what strategy and what strategy you should be using against them. This other game is the metagame. It doesn't refer to a specific strategy, but rather this entire ecosystem of strategies. Since genshin is non-competitive, there is no rock-paper-scissor dance so the metagame simply boils down to "what most people are doing". Not "what is the most effective".

[@magiclover9346]

My goal is to 36 star the abyss consistently with as many teams as possible. So I don't go for cons on 5 starts. I go for weapons for transferable power between teams. The difference between a Noelle on Whiteblind and a Noelle on Stonethresher is significant. I want to be able to pick and choose which teams I take to the abyss instead of being funnelled into one team every time because I've hyper-invested into a speed clear team etc. I also advocate for flexible units over pure power hence my reasoning for always defending Ayato when he's called mid or trash. You can build so many teams and clear the abyss comfortably with him. That said my focus changed after I hit the clear abyss consistently goal back in 2.0 with Mono Geo / Raiden National and Hu Tao.

[@pepitothefrogito7372]

god damn i'm gonna need those wallpapers, where can i find them? Wallpaper Engine?

[@Artesianss]

Yep, the links to them (or most of them) are on my Twitter in a pinned tweet

[@kingdoom5022]

Eula is one of the units that got massively buff by furina , not only furina give insane buff that physical units lacks in the game and gives huge sub DPS , but eula was already using mika as her best teammate so she already have amazing healer , also the new crit rate set is his best one with furina , she still isn't top tier like neuvellite but she's still good at ganyu level at minimum

[@tristanmanalo6252]

Bruhh why noone talking about dps razor he also buffed bigtime by Furina 😅😅😅

[@TheMoonestOne]

25:16 this point is 100% true. You guys mentioned Starcraft, League of Legends, or even other Gacha games that has a different vibe from Genshin, but there is another game where the character attachment is designed by the dev studio which affects negatively the community: mainline Pokemon games. If a player want to compete in Pokemon VGC, they have to build their Pokemon with a lot of processes in mind just to use those Pokemon online and then discover their favorite is actually bad. Which is why several "casuals" get salty when the "competitive players" use meta units and say that certain pokemon is not good. I haven't tought about it, but this actually makes sense. For example, I play Splatoon competitively as well, and I'd say while people can be personally attached to a game style, they can see the flaws of their favorite weapons since they experiment by easily changing weapon/builds. So the discourse is more around "please buff my weapon" instead of "don't say my weapon is bad, I like it", I'd say.

[@darbshiler3866]

6:57 Zajef, I enjoy your analysis and opinions, but how can u say that in one week u can 36 star abyss when it seems to take a few weeks worth of resin to fully build just ONE character…

[@aerohydra3849]

I think he was referring to a CN player who did in fact 36 star in a week with Nilou Bloom and Hyperbloom. It was during 3.6 I think, he played a huge amount, the blessing was a huge dendro reaction buff, cleared the entire game in a week and got enough primos for Nilou, Key, and Nahida. Definitely not to be expected of a new player but I think the point is if with enough optimization something can be done in such a short time frame then it means a lot of people want TC beyond just abyss clears.

[@zanzatbc]

Zajef: do people pull on characters because they are bad?! Also Zajef: *pulls for Dehya*

[@ceizhore4498]

tbf Zajef only pulled for Dehya because he really likes her character

[@Rutrakpm]

When talking abt attachment vs resources spent, Genshin is more comparable to TCGs like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic, where you can't really buy all options, so you usually have to stick with your choices and hope they are good, and in both of those cases it usually comes from people who aren't as invested in the game so they can't buy their way out of a "bad" (or in most cases, just slightly worse) investment

[@lilacdragon17329]

Around 26:30 (I started during 1.6) Personally I didn't play XQ for the longest time, because I thought (and still do tbh) that his personality is the blandest in the whole cast. I knew from a very early stage that he's a strong unit, even at low knowledge of the game i noticed his consistency and damage, but my thought process was, "why should I invest into a character that i'm barely gonna use, maybe in abyss if ever". So instead i invested into characters i liked using in the overworld, like Yanfei. Of course eventually my XQ (and XL too) got invested into, because i ran the Emblem domain for months and months, also ran out of characters i wanted to invest into, and also slowly got into tc'ing and *actually* realized his full potential, especially after Dendro came out

[@juggernaut6666]

after you 36 star the abyss a few times the meta starts to mean less. I skipped Neuvilette because I'm not going to use an old man with a walking stick. I am planning to get Yae Miko and Klee even though they are not great. At this point unless a character unlocks multiple new team comps like Furina then I don't care. all that matters is if i like the character or if they improve characters I like.

[@voii0777]

Hey, the old man with a walking stick is the coolest character in the game

[@ChurlzVA]

Neuvillette is broken lmfao. Also Yae is VERY fkn good.

[@ixirion]

Klee and Yae are actually great. a bit clunky maybe as most ranged catlysts. Kleerina is very good team and C2 Klee is speedrun material.

[@juggernaut6666]

Trust me i know he's broken I've tried him in a few of the events. I don't need that level of power right now. since Fontaine started and we no longer have the consecrated beasts the abyss is a joke. @@ChurlzVA

[@kingdoom5022]

Yae miko is one of the best 5 stars in the game

[@DHBFISN]

It's been commented but the backgrounds really are pretty and we would like to know where we can find em!

[@LeeroyJenk]

Is there any way to get this in an actual podcast app?

[@Artesianss]

Which ones do you think we should upload them to?

[@LeeroyJenk]

@@Artesianss an RSS feed would be easiest but Spotify, Pocket casts and Apple podcasts are probably the main 3

[@HouseKatArmy]

Furina, Raiden, and a DPS Barbara is pretty amazing tbh. Any character can be slotted in the flex spot.

[@Qkochan3]

okay im sorry, elemental gauge theory IS interesting and i enjoy thinking about it and building teams around the gauge interactions, but freminet or eula having hyperbloom as their best teams isnt a symptom of dendro, its a symptom of the fact that theyre PHYSICAL UNITS. "grab your nahida and your raiden and xq/yelan", unfortunately freminet and eula dont give to fucks about e gauge theory :D theyre literally mash left click and ignore reactions completely. maybe your issue is with how PHYSICAL itself is designe?? and not necessarily hyperbloom in that instance? shatter could have been a really cool thing to capitalize on for once with freminet, but they did nothing with it really and thats kind of hoyo's fault not hyperbloom lmao. also maybe another issue is just how shit freeze in general is unless theres mobs but also just how shit freminet would even be in a multi target scenario vs if he was just in a 1-2 taget scenario. he cant even USE shatter in situations he would be good in which is just how poorly he was designed. hyperbloom actually gives him some kind of chance to actually be OKAY in abyss vs just being complete shit. tldr; physical doesnt care about e gauge theory and its not hyperblooms fault physical is dogshit. beg devs to stop putting out garbage phys characters maybe instead of blaming hyperbloom for unrelated bad character design

[@Axterix13]

I don't think the phys characters are actually bad, per se. And by that, I mean all one of them. Rather, as you say, the issues lie within physical itself (superconduct, shieldbreaking, anemo being the only groupers but having jack all to offer to the phys character). They really need to give us a non-anemo grouper (both for phys and anemo's sake) and rework super-conduct.

[@Syokool]

Shatter without stun is worse. Physical died not bc it's bad but because other reactions were buffed with new characters or elements. In fact, best Eula team is not dendro and it wasn't complete before Furina's release.

[@tatotato85]

Looking forward to the next one, Navia looks interesting

[@nobrainnogame4320]

Why trying to argue over powercreep definition when there is an official one from wikitionary? Basically when newer content released with patches for a game make older content feel underpowered, it falls into powercreep category. Without even talking about Neuvillette, we already had a couple of powercreep occurrences: for example Inazuma... Abysses difficulty has been on an upward trend ever since release. Remember there was a time when 36* Abysses using only the starter characters. Nowdays it's no longer realistically feasible. And what was used to be considered as "decent" level of investment for many old characters wouldn't by nowdays standards.

[@Syokool]

Benet, Xiangling and Xingchiu weren't that good b4 but they were powerlifted and so washed Jean in 4.2. Genshin doesn't need powercreep nor have done it at all, they actually made the opposite and keep popping new mechanics off making unused characters relevant.

[@nobrainnogame4320]

@@Syokool No powercreep at all? You're being delusional. Come on, tell me that Venti was no powercrept by 2.0 when his CC could no longer work on small sized ennemies. Dare tell me that Diluc doesn't feel underpowered compared to Neuvillette. You fail to understand either why characters such as Bennett, Xiangling and Xinqiu weren't considered as that good in 1.0 (Bennett was considered as the worst character back then). That's because people were trying to play everything as an hypercarry. Irronically Bennett has never been in a more precarious position than today why so many top tier characters not scaling on ATK.

[@luminous3558]

Yeah just look at the abyss hp tripling from 1.0 til now. Next Abyss with hydro tulpa is gonna be the real test because that thing is absurdly beefy and invalidates a lot of teams with its permanent hydro aura.

[@Yanaro-pi8pt]

​@@nobrainnogame4320 1.0 was also mostly just about exploration, obviously burst based characters were bad. Not to mention the lack of ER from subpar artifacts and weapons.

[@archiegriffs]

World levels not scaling any further after a certain point whilst also incentivizing optimal primo and resin spending to clear the abyss is probably the worst design decision I've ever seen a very good game make that also hasn't sparked any outcry in the community or had an effect on the game's success. The gameplay of the overworld actively gets worse the older your account is and the more you've invested resin into characters/weapons/artifacts. There stops being a purpose to improve your characters whilst also doing story and overworld content, and so your enjoyment of that content diminishes after you've spent like 6 months to a year worth of resin. That's an absolutely enormous problem for returning players that doesn't get talked about enough, Mihoyo is doing nothing to encourage returning players from enjoying the games biggest selling points, and the best way for returning players to enjoy the game is to just do the main questline every year and then come back in a year. Just like how they gave players an option to make their world easier, they should also absolutely be giving the option to make the world harder, honestly significantly harder. Otherwise all the resin and primos you've poured into your favorite characters becomes a hindrance to your account. There is a downside sometimes to having a massive casual audience, I wish they'd also find ways to cater to the gamers among us, and there's fairly cost effective ways of doing it since it primarily just involves hp/damage tweaks.

[@NatWarrior1]

That part about returning players is so true because I've seen TONS of people on social media saying how Sumeru was the thing that killed genshin but then they came back because of Fontaine and now everything is better but like 💀 I am willing to bet that most of these people are going to drop genshin again around the 4.4/4.5 mark only to come back again when Natlan comes out and the cycle will keep going like this. Genshin has had this problem since 1.0, it's just more apparent with Sumeru but it's going to keep happening until genshin makes a big change.

[@Axterix13]

I do think Sumeru did reduce interest a decent amount. If you compare Sumeru regions to Fontaine, for example, Fontaine's areas added per patch are much more compact, and this overall feels much better (except the prison, which is the worst designed area in all of Genshin and nothing ever should send us there again). There's just too much desert. And yeah, it is partially the nature of the beast... a desert can't exactly be densely packed, but regardless, way too much desert. As far as world level scaling, it is definitely an issue. And it started with Ganyu's release. She could one shot hilichurl camps with an Amos Bow. Her being the new standard for five star DPS damage, well, needless to say, that means pretty much everything has been boring since then for an account with a Ganyu+ five star DPS who has 5 star artifacts. They did up the hp a bit in Inazuma and beyond to compensate, but they're kind of limited due to wanting to keep things casual/new-player friendly. Still think they really need to let me voluntarily up my world level, no need to impact loot, and no cooldown to drop it back down. I think this impacts events as well. Too many events don't use combat, so you aren't even using your character's stats. Of the combat ones, almost all of them are aimed at about AR50 players... level 80 characters, pretty meh stats on artifacts, no constellations, level 8 talents. So an older player doesn't even look at the event mechanics, just throws their favorite team at it, and still gets more than 3x the score needed to get all the rewards. They no doubt do this to keep the game accessible to casuals and new players. But it also creates a "what's the point?" for older players. Most games would solve this in other ways, like requiring repeated runs at lower difficulties to get all the rewards, while a more powerful player would take fewer ones by playing it at a higher difficulty. Genshin doesn't do this. Probably because the game is aimed at a certain demographic: Chinese 9/9/7 types who play the game for 20m on the train ride to and from work, and are too exhausted from those long hours to want any sort of challenge.

[@shizhou5809]

I think you might be over estimating how much the combat of the game was the selling point. It is definitely a good portion but exploration is much bigger. This is the reason why there is such a massive casual audience. Hoyo wants the game to be known for the world and exploration, not combat. The combat is to compliment the exploration, take Zelda for example its not all that unique but still needed for exploration to feel good. The Witcher has great story but the gameplay nothing special. IMO, the element combat was design around the world and story, not the other way around. HSR has combat focus there with SU/MoC and higher MoC floors to come. For gamers, we expect some kind of challenging gameplay but thats kind of the issue. There ends up being 2 ways for us to be satisfied, harder content or different content. Harder content means powercreep or it ends up being stangnant as itll be the same thing at the same difficulty. Different modes needs enough participation and quality for it to be worth continuing. Ah, one more, strong characters. For the casuals? Keep the map updates and average power characters but good design to make money and coming back to play. Its just really unfortunate that a great combat system is in a game where the focus isnt combat. Lucky and unlucky situation.

[@Syokool]

Who in their right senses will make content for "returning players". If they left once they can leave twice. Also, while combat is a selling point, it was the massive map and freedom that makes genshin the game above others. That's why these new games all are open world, continously map and lots of exploration.

[@archiegriffs]

@@NatWarrior1 I'm having a problem where I can't even get myself into the mood for the archon quests because of Sumeru burn out, and my solution was to just completely start over on a new account and treat it like it's the main one I'll play for gameplay/progression/story content, and then just use the old one for collection purposes and for when I feel like playing certain comps. Weird solution considering I've poured a good $400+ at this point and a ton of time into the characters, but it's really nice for a change actually having too many goals at once for building characters and being able to actively feel the difference in progression when you spend resin on a character. Nowadays with an established account you either have the character completely outscale the overworld content the day they release or you don't already have their artifact set and are spending 2 months worth of resin on them to get them up to the level you expect them to meet to be as good as all your other characters. With a fresh account I feel like I have too many choices that are also impactful on my progression/fun, and with an older one I feel like I have too many choices of how to spend my time without any of the fun or meaning behind them. But yeah right on the money with Sumeru burning out long-term players, I loved the main quests but that's not exclusively why I'd play Genshin, if that was the only thing keeping me invested I'd just watch anime/read manga.

[@kimarimoi]

Every time people say getting 36 stars is "easy," my skepticism meter goes to maximum. Like, as a day-1 player, just completing the abyss took me almost 6 months. 36 stars took about a year, and about another year to get to a point where it wasn't a huge time investment every cycle. There's a bunch of possible explanations for this. One is that, in all things involving skill or learning, it's hard for experts to understand the newbie experience, or even remember their own. Each account also has different tools available, especially considering whales vs. F2P. Abyss enemies and bonus effects keep changing, making it easier or harder for different teams. There isn't even much agreement about what "easy" means--that could mean anything from "doable in less than 50 tries" to "my cat sat on my keyboard and got 36 stars" depending on who you ask. Buuut the biggest one is the fact that Real Gamers are not allowed to admit that anything is difficult. If anyone actually sees this comment, they're probably going to immediately start typing something that amounts to "git gud." I think we should keep in mind that the majority of players don't even *attempt* spiral abyss regularly, let alone get the max score. Combat in this game is surprisingly complicated, and it doesn't explain the mechanics very well (it doesn't even have character classes! hope you're willing to memorize which ones are healers, buffers, etc.). "Meta" has as much to do with ease of use as power level... which is why Neuvillette is the first character I consider true powercreep, because it was the first time a solo character appeared in the popular team rankings. And it's also why I think certain 1.0 4-stars are highly overrated by theorycrafters, because while they can theoretically work better than many 5-stars, the latter tend to be significantly easier to build and use.

[@Syokool]

The real issue with ppl having a hard time on spiral abyss is they underestimate the importance of supports. You can't just have 1 op 5* and think that's enough, bc what matters is the support from a lot of 4*. You can always use Xiangling, Benet, Xingchiu, Rosaria, Barbara, Collei, dendro traveler, Fischl, Yaoyao, Amber, Kaeya, Beidu, Thoma, Yanfei, etc and still complete the 36*. That's the reason it takes so long, ppl don't build supports and instead they level up waifus and husbandos. They don't know how a very well built xq+Xiangling do above 100k per hit in the national, they ignore that Barbara+Rosaria+Collei is a team for freeze bloom with blooms over 20k without Nilou. For a solid f2p or dolphin or even whale spiral abyss completion, you need between 6 and 8 supports, no less. Once your supports are cracked, your whole roster is cracked and you'll see big numbers popping off on the screen.

[@KairongMa]

I'm curious, out of the 1.0 4 stars, aside from sucrose, who do you consider to be overrated and hard to use compared to their 5* counterparts? Because I think no character can replicate what Bennett does. Xingqiu with his interrupt resist and DR is easier to use than Yelan, Fischl is easier and alot less time consuming than Yae, and Xiangling is definitely easier to use than Hutao.

[@aerohydra3849]

To be fair, day 1 players had a lot less to work with back then and didn't have teams like hyperbloom/nilou bloom with lower investment floor requirements. Of course, easy is relative, but I think they mean that if you have an understanding of game mechanics and play good rotations, an average account should be able to 36 star within a few months. I think a lot of people in TC do have a bit of warped view of progression since they play and invest a lot more time/thought than the regular player (Jstern and TGS were able to get a fresh account to 36 star in a month for example but they literally cleared the entire game with many hours of playtime per day to get multiple limited 5 stars). But I think most people who are interested in the meta are also by nature going to be more hardcore than the regular playerbase. As for 1.0 4 stars being overrated and 5 stars being easier to play, I kind of disagree? Or at least for some of them. I think Xiangling now is not as good as she used to be due to us having so many options and she does need energy management which is a minus, and Sucrose has always been a bit divisive since she's harder to optimally use than Kazuha, but IMO Xingqiu and especially Fischl have held up very well. I don't see how XQ or Fischl are harder to build and use than 5 star characters, Fischl literally is just press E and Xingqiu is press E Q. Neuvillette I do not think is actually that easy to use, at least not at C0 due to his lack of interrupt resistance (plus technically his AoE ceiling being spin2win lol). He's a very good solo character due to being very self-sufficient but solo power has never been indicative of team performance.

[@luminous3558]

@@KairongMa xiangling is way harder to use than hu tao. Yelan does more damage than xq and xq needs his cons. Energy requirements are the bane of casual players. People will regularly burst every 2-3 rotations. The 4 star characters need to be played well due to having inherently less damage in their kit to perform on the level of the 5* dps. Please look at what sucrose national needs to do to actually put out proper damage on top of meeting ER requirements on 3 units.

[@KairongMa]

@luminous3558 Hutao is currently the hardest character in the game to play mechanically. I doubt a casual player is even able to do even to do more than 5 N2cs in a rotation at c0 and run into stamina issues. (play her at more 60% potential). As for XL, Get the catch and Emblem on XL and shes already at 170 ER without any ER subs or sands and characters like raiden and fav supplement ER requirements. Obviously c0 yelan is way better than c0 xingqiu. But I expect all day 1 players to have c6 XQ at this point. Yelan does have better damage but has way stricter ER requirements. Shes needs about 230 ER as solo hydro while c6 Xq only needs about 180%. XQ is also easier to slot into teams like Hutao or national due to his better hydro app. Even with teams like Alhaitham quickbloom where less hydro is better, alot of players prefer to run XQ over yelan because they prefer the comfiness he provides. I agree sucrose national is overrated which is why I said aside from sucrose in my original comment.

[@NahualUlloa]

Gorgeous Columbina wallpaper btw

[@frankjiang1857]

Thanks for the podcast, though I didn't find the discussion particularly interesting, but I think that might just be that it's not really that relevant to Genshin. A correction. Zajef is correct in that meta does NOT come from "Most Effective Tactic Available." He is incorrect in his definition of meta. He states that "it's study of." That's a different Greek pre/suffix which is logy (hence, biology, anthropology, theology, geology, etc.). He probably just read it from twitch chat and didn't bother to check that it was correct since he probably doesn't care enough to do that. Meta means beyond, after, behind, or higher. Which is why metaphysics is looking at things beyond, after or higher than physics. However, where meta likely comes from is this: "The word meta is Greek and means "among, with, after," but we can thank New Latin, the language of scientific nomenclature, for its use prefixing the names of certain disciplines. In its most basic use, meta- describes a subject in a way that transcends its original limits, considering the subject itself as an object of reflection. Consequently, metatheory is theory about theory; metacriticism is criticism about how we critique a work of art; metafiction is fiction in which the author takes steps to acknowledge the artifice of fiction writing. And metadata is data that helps you further analyze other data-for example, the number of surveys that were taken on a given subject. So many things, in fact, can be viewed through the lens of self-reference that meta has taken on its own identity as an adjective." So, since meta is THE transcendental thing, and since we are talking about gaming instead of gaming itself, we likely got the term meta from meta-gaming.

[@BiscuitGeoff]

That definition of ‘meta’ is pretty sus. It sounds like a backronym to me. Meta- is a suffix meaning ‘higher, beyond, behind, underlying and overarching’ hence the idea of a meta game.

[@bingotries]

im definitely a player who has all of my characters well invested with good artifacts but struggles with abyss T . T i have trouble team building and figuring out when to use each unit for the enemies :c it was nice to be acknowledged bc build guides just dont help me

[@Syokool]

There are steps to complete the s. Abyss. 1. Well built characters. 2. Enough supports, at least 6 that can synergize with every elemental reaction. 3. Good understanding of cooldowns more than effects. 4. Good understanding of the uptime. 5. Practice. You have just completed the first part, maybe the second, but lack a good understanding of combat tactics and probably haven't payed attention to overworld or domain enemies. The uptime changes and determine how much you can be with a character on field before it is a nuisance. The cooldowns help you understand why Furina is good for every team, while XQ is not. For example, Tartaglia has an uptime that let's you stay with him for several seconds, hitting and Inducing reactions, while Ayaka has low uptime so her maximum damage is concentrated on a very small period of time, and thus you need to prepare all your buffs for that one period of time so she causes the most damage. Also, a good understanding of how enemies move, bc it's always the same. When they attack, when they move, when they jump outwards, etc. Don't think that getting full stars is a matter of just characters. You need to practice and invest in your characters. Guides are helpful but you can always ask for advice, create your own combinations, look for what is easier and what is uncomfortable for you. Maybe you can't archers or dislike catalyst, or you enjoy claymore and are very good with them, etc.

[@sefjo5223]

Its aight my guy, discover more on youtube or twitch viewer accnt abysss moments. Take your time on the abyss goal and discover the means. Whatever question you have on current abyss cycles dont be afraid to ask specifically and people would answer

[@deathmetalalchemist5861]

the next step is usually to find a good balance of units and then a rotation where your main abilities are up at the same time so 3 or 4 of your characters are attacking together... Some common "good" archetypes are national (Xq, Bennet,XL with any reasonable 4th), taser (anemo, hydro, electro and then a second hydro or electro), and hyperbloom (Nahida, Raiden/Kuki, hydro, any reasonable 4th)...once you have a good archetype, what's the order of skills and bursts you will use so that you have the most uptime on everyone attacking together...without knowing your built units, it's hard to suggest further

[@kanashiiinu9124]

Just type "spiral abyss floor 12 (insert character)" in yt. Then use the sorting options like "this week or this month" to filter out old abyss runs. Copy the team and gameplay as much as u can.

[@kanoaika]

Yep, building the characters you use in Abyss well enough is necessary but definately not sufficient on its own to clear abyss. Lots of people underestimate the other factors (probably because they are much harder to quantify).

[@finebook281]

TC Roundtable hype

[@Axterix13]

I don't think it is necessarily that people unjustly defend their favorite characters, but rather, that people unjustly write them off completely. Furthermore, while Genshin is overall easy and you can brute force a lot of things, there are also a lot of little quirks that exist. Which means that someone who mains a character can get far better performance out of said character than someone who heard they were bad, tried them once, and agreed with the sentiment. Like I find clearing the Abyss with on field Dehya to be pretty darn easy, and that has been the case for every single Abyss other than the one with the 2 cryo lectors and the bishop... an elemental counter check, for which Dehya gets a little screwed due to the whole "E won't proc on shielded enemies" thing. Still did it. Just wasn't as easy as the rest of them. So if someone says Dehya sucks and is worthless, well, they're wrong. It's that they don't know how to Dehya. But if someone says, "Hu Tao is more powerful" or "Dehya has drawbacks that limit her general usefulness and team construction", then, yeah, that's true. Hoyoverse really screwed up with her kit. I also think how Genshin plays has an impact. In Arknights, you put the unit at the spot, and that's that. The unit might perform differently, but not to the same degree of moving a 3d character around a 3d map actively, with just one character being the focus at a time. And when you combine that with how different characters can feel, well, people are majorly impacted by how they like playing, by the animations, and so on, more so than other games, where things are often much more cluttered.

[@Axterix13]

As far as power creep goes, I think we've just had a big chunk of it. Furina making all those lesser characters suddenly able to easily clear the Abyss? Well, not only does that make it super easy to clear the Abyss, but she does that for several units that already were strong there as well. She's power creep on the buffing side. And there's Neuv, who is just OP. Lyney is pretty crazy as well. Wrizzy is better boss killer than Ayaka. All of this is power creeping upwards. And what will that result in? We're going to see the Abyss difficulty cranked up soon to compensate, mostly because of Furina's impact. Which is going to suck for all those players that were doing okay in the Abyss but skipped her, as well as any new players who will have to wait for re-runs.

[@xanaviii]

The way players should interpret meta for *gacha* games should always be "how do i make the character i like strong/effective". There will always be some characters that are objectively better than others. And personal investment will always skew bias and reason. Most of the Geshin community doesn't understand this, which is why they're always arguing with each other.

[@Friendfox]

in pokemon go, "meta" gaming is like "if your opponent is playing the best team possible, how do you counter it?" which is why "most effective tactic" always seemed false to me

[@ssybanana2930]

the fact that theres a strongest team n ppl are playing that shows that meta exist no? ofc meta in pvp game will be different from meta in pve game.

[@Axterix13]

@@ssybanana2930 And that people are trying to work out how to counter it, that seems like they're looking for the most effective tactic possible to do that...

[@Friendfox]

@@Axterix13 it's been a while since i played, but the gist was that if the "most effective" team involved, say, Mewtwo, then the "meta" team would counter mewtwo with dark. even if your dark characters would get destroyed by somebody not playing mewtwo.

[@Friendfox]

@@ssybanana2930 for sure - the genshin meta changes based on the abyss lineup changes, so there's always one meta, with variations for what characters people have.

[@dicuns]

I really would like to see that "from AR1 to 36 star abyss in one week"...

[@Deepstab1]

I’ll be honest, most people engage in meta discussions only to get bragging rights about their waifs/husbando and bother other players with that info, as they say only one single floor in the abyss can be considered a dps check and honestly no one even enjoys doing it from what I can tell, I find the local legends battle more entertaining most of the time

[@veersandhu5277]

I'm glad this pod is back, but I do think having a fourth member would be good. What happened to Ayzel?

[@gading5797]

IMPORTANT QUESTION! where can i get that wallpaper?

[@Nadi-Ger]

Very nice, thanks!

[@AgerLight]

For the Kokomi, Furina, Xiangling, Bennet team wouldn't ayato be really good? his on field time is only around 6s, it's enough time to swap around units for bennet heal no? Also his AoE is much bigger making it easier for aoe situations. Not sure about Nuvi and how he would fare with the shorter durations

[@rinngu618]

Kokomi with her Q she heals team wide, apart from having a nice damage if you have the q talent well invested

[@ixirion]

at C0 Fruina koko helps a lot with fanfare. since dmg dealers are Furi and XL fanfare matters a lot. Ayato is still very good. even Candace is good actually. I preffer Candace even cos I can counter enemies which is more fun :) oh and lets not forget .. Hydrotraveler!!! I did clear with him and he is actually comfy cos he has a shield. my traveler actually does a bit of dmg/around 170k per rotation/ and helps with healing.

[@Syokool]

Having Bennet there is a mistake, bc unless you actually need more buffs than Furina's, he's pretty much useless in Furina based teams. You can actually get better results from Kazuha+Xiangling + anything other hydro character included Ayato. Also the most important part for hydro off field support was the tight times it was avaliable but Furina fixes that and let you perform with compositions from 12s to 20s rotations. Kokomi is not that good compared to Jean or Baizhu or even Charlotte, but is still a good option. Just be aware that, unless you use her first, she will steal Furina's buffs for no reason.

[@ixirion]

@@Syokool Beny is actually part of Furina best teams in many situations. he buffs ATT main carry better than Furina but he just dont have her personal dmg

[@AgerLight]

yes i know, thing is I think you don't really need kokomis team wide healing if you play ayato because of his short rotations leading you to be able to switch in other units to be healed leading to sure less fanfare probably but overall from ayatos personal dmg worth it. Only problem is bennet healing in those high HP teams, especially with C2 ayato which increases his total HP more, might be tough on bennet@@rinngu618​

[@banztagtv]

22:30 - kb's point is interesting, but i feel as tho people in this game dont really have much to say about their fav char being weak beacause Hoyo rarely ever directly buffs anything after its out. exceptions being zhong and new artifacts but true. nevermind this comment is useless now he just addressed it XD

[@HotPepperLala]

39:11 thats subject to debate no?

[@acidicdragon1036]

Does anyone know where I can find the Columbina art at 0:03 ?

[@Syokool]

Look for boorus pages, hoyolab, Google lens, sad panda etc. Lots of sources of those artworks.

[@seakay17]

Hey does anyone know where can I get that kokomi wallpaper? Much appreciated

[@jotarokujo312]

Where can I get that wallpaper? Pls give me the link!

[@jmfe10]

I do think with Neuvillette, Genshin has stepped into powercreep territory for the 1st time ever. I have both of them and Neuvillette is simply better in every case. I don't even consider Ayato in Nilou teams because that's not a real Ayato team, it's a suboptimal Nilou team. I usually don't ever regret pulling units, but after Neuvillette, I started regretting Ayato. If his raw damage was higher he'd still be worth using, but that's not the case.

[@soullordbr6183]

18:50 Looking for that Raiden wallpaper. Anyone has it on Wallpaper engine?

[@kylel8258]

How did he gets those rotating wallpapers?

[@Syokool]

Wallpaper engine on steam.

[@HW-tz3cy]

It just against bot bro, what so competitive about it..

[@April2x]

can I get a link to the slideshow of the arts please?

[@yoiko89]

Nice podcast with good art background

[@markantwn7189]

never commentin but FOR THE ALGORITHM.. keep up the content

[@hansjiang373]

18:15 very useless sentence

[@RishabhSharma-lq1id]

Why didn't I thought about Kokomi Furina Bennett Xiangling team before? This team is actually good.

[@Nihilore]

god i hate that backronym, it doesn't even make sense in most applications within gaming

[@luminous3558]

Yeah its so cringe.

[@nathanpapp432]

Zajef makes the point that the gatcha system randomizes people's accounts and dictates support options, but one of the things TC's (Zajef included) can overlook is character versatility/flexibility. One character might do more raw damage than another but they might have stricter team building or artifact or weapon requirements. Who is actually the "better character" in that scenario? Its hard to define.

[@Syokool]

Neuvillete. He doesn't need a team, doesn't scale on cr cd but hp, and has a complete kit that let's you use pamber and still do insane amounts of damage alone. Furina and Nahida, also Raiden have very much specific builds, and great returns for that investment so any account with those characters can feel a massive difference between having them or not. Kazuha and Yelan are the top of the cream, easy builds, easy weapons, easy everything. There are basically 4 top xahracetrs+ Neuvillete, and having them in plies you are self sufficient and entered a phase of thinking more refined teams rather than the usual national. Ofc Zajef is correct, but he also asumes ppl will not pull for best characters most of the time while we all know that's actually incorrect.

[@nathanpapp432]

@@Syokool I dont think thats a bad assumption. I think people mostly pull for the characters they like. I pulled Yoimiya on her first banner, sandwiched between Ayaka and Raiden. I have no regrets, I've gotten Raiden since then and if i had to keep one it would be Yoimiya.

[@beastwithin7772]

Zyox in Podcast when. 😊

[@m.a.r.s5789]

Thats gonna be insane bc he will probably act normal

[@m.a.r.s5789]

But i dont think he cares about tc

[@MrGshinobi]

he would talk about c0ck most of the time tho, and i'd watch that

[@NatWarrior1]

​@m.a.r.s5789 during his streams he seems to be pretty passionate about some of these things and he does have a direct connection to the podcast with zajef. It's probably more likely that he just doesn't care *enough* to be on the podcast (or he is just busy)

[@princessochka3690]

Majority of players don't understand, that Genshin isn't balanced for PC. Its balance difficulty aims at mobile/very casual/mechanically weak players, who rarely log, who don't really farm artifacts, who actually struggle in abyss (but have money in pockets). Mihoyo doesn't monetize stronger units, like other gachas do (aka powercreep). Instead, they release flawed, often underpowered units - and monetize solutions for those flaws (aka signature and first couple constelations). For those casual players who dont even log much, it is more rational and easy just to "buy" +30% dmg upgrade with R1C2 to finally clear abyss instead of farming for months to cover those flaws with artifact stats. So yea, Genshin doesn't really have powercreep in a "gacha" sense.

[@sourav.T.S]

yeah but its still not a hard game by any metric , its not like theres a skill cap or anything thats barely a thing here

[@wahabozomaki6312]

why no one talks about lenny

[@Syokool]

Worst synergy with almost all other characters, uncomfortable archer type dps, can't use Yelan and Xingchiu support, only good for mono pyro.

[@markeeecmarkoni2855]

I personally don't understand why would any body need to have C6 five* And R5 or lower? Why Mihoyo? To me, that's robbery for people when I can beat game with 100% f2p but what about them? I have a feeling that people who invest max in the account are actually tricked because they gave them the end game abyiss? For me abyiss is mostly easy ride and always 36 but what about them? Why do they need to have C6 R5 Furina? For what?

[@marky4627]

Because they like the characters and that's enough for them. It's as simple as that. It's not robbery they know what they are putting their money in for and if it makes them happy as long as they can afford it then who cares?

[@dickcheesemcgee2375]

1000$ to you might be alot to you but to some others, it's just a fraction of their disposable income, and people spend money on what they enjoy all the time. This is just my point of view, but I don't pull any C6 that basically just increases their dmg, like Eula, Neuvilette, Al Haitham, Raiden, Ayaka, ......, I don't give a fuck about who the characters are, only gameplay, so I pull for C6 that actually change, or at least add something to their gameplay, like Itto, Faruzan, Cyno, Kazuha,.... It's the fun factor that I'm paying for, not the damage, cause every single C0 5* can clear the hardest content in the game with the right artifact, i'm paying so I can see Itto do infinite charge attacks, to see Faruzan gets turned into an on field dps, to see Cyno attacks faster,......

[@luminous3558]

@@dickcheesemcgee2375 Also many people dont spend real cash on genshin to pull on 1 banner. People save free primos and welkin gems because they dont find many characters appealing and would rather go in on the ones they like. 5$ a month for an eventual c6 isnt that much.

[@KategariYami]

12:21 Yeah true some people end up with one of the most incredible characters in the game, and some people end up with Xingqiu...

[@DenDenGlitched]

wallpaper?

[@heksatek3407]

miko ei desktop wallpaper sauce pls

[@DJPonko]

some of u people have a severe lack of perspective.. the game changes so incredibly much if you have Venti or Kazuha. They can enable so many teams that are so much worse without them. I dont have either one of them btw and i watch people's clears and i can see how massive the difference is. The part where the mobs are spread is literally the biggest issue, not the characters themselves. A bad character is still better than a good one if he has better grouping and if he/she can land their abilities better. I'm actually annoyed over how broken Kazuha/Venti are cus they have the best pull and no other units can compete. 4 year old game and we have no grouping options besides those two

[@xSeira-]

How to do that wallpaper showcase

[@Pramit2000]

Where the hell on earth did they find those wallpapers?

[@degenxayah]

banger video

[@kingsimba9513]

Meta didn't matter in Genshin as soon as the devs said that they didn't want to cause 'anxiety' by introducing harder content. I'd bet my spine that you'd still be able to clear the abyss with a National and a Hyperbloom team even when we're in Schnenaya. Sort of defeats the whole action rpg element of this 'open-world action rpg' game but they, at least I won't feel anxiety by potentially missing out on 50 whole primogems every two weeks from not being able to 36-star the abyss! What a joke of a design choice when 80% of what you do in the game is designed to make your characters stronger, and the other 20% is for collecting resources to pull for new units that are nine times out of ten worse than past units. With Genshin's stagnant (and sometimes negative) difficulty progression the game becomes a glorified visual novel with a bonus character collection feature.

[@Axterix13]

Considering the Abyss has crept up over time, I don't think that'll be the case. I expect, as the impact of Furina sinks in, we're going to see some of the hardest Abysses ever pretty soon, as the Abyss scales up to match her impact. And yes, that'll mean, for those with her, it'll effectively be business as usual. But those without her?

[@kingsimba9513]

@Axterix13 the abyss as it stands is a sad excuse for end game content. Unless they add more floors or revamp the system (e.g., give more time but increase enemy count), there's only so much harder it could get. As it stands they're only really able to increase the enemy health pool to add difficulty, and even then I'm fairly certain that you can clear whatever they throw at you with either National/Hyperbloom. Also, there's the 'fun' component to consider. No one likes time-sensitive content, and even if they do make it difficult it'll be arbitrary in nature (increasing health pool). This doesn't add to the enjoyment of beating challenging content as everything simply turns into a dps check. Being able to make decisions via a rogue-like game system such as the one in HSR is, imo, the best way to make end game content work. Another option is to add an endless/survival mode where there's no time limit (I believe HSR is adding this in the next patch too lmao).

[@thebrigade7684]

Yeah and "we" are the problem here people whale for C6 R5 with thousands of money hoyo has no reason to design endgame because people keep spending. I can't grasp why would people are spending this much on a thing that is clearly a waste since as you mentioned this game is practically a visual novel only.

[@baguette_connoisseur]

The reality is that meta in Genshin doesn't matter. With the exception of a very limited number of genuinely horrible characters, every other character is capable of achieving 36* with average level of investment. And even then, the overwhelming majority of players don't even enter Floor 12 EVER.

[@kaito9836]

As much as I love those individual content creators, the silence in between each convo is awkward lol. The flow is so bad. There's Zajeff who doesn't say a thing for like a whole 10 min.

[@WildspeakerYT]

Zajef: "do people pull for characters bc they are bad?" -> Also Zajef: Pulling Dehya bc she's dogshit, but also he likes her

[@tonydai782]

The reason he likes Dehya isn’t because she’s bad. The fact that she’s bad is not a positive for him.

[@Syokool]

​@@tonydai782big words for a guy that said on stream that whales will mostly prefer c6 Xingchiu instead of c6 Yelan and that unironically have his favorite characters as the bland and boring ones of each region. Stop, no one can actually defend Zajef's preferences and he in fact likes trashy characters overall.

[@tonydai782]

@@Syokool Taking what he said out of context. He did not say that whales bench their C6 Yelan for C6 Xingqiu. He said that whales still use Xingqiu while having C6 Yelan. Please

[@tonydai782]

@@Syokool If you're gonna just take something like that out of context, then equally I can claim that you're claiming that Neuvillette is bland and boring.

[@cedrusnguyen5188]

​@@tonydai782 Kinda like how whale do uses Venti over Kazuha when he is good, as Venti provide something other than damage, which is already kind of abundant at that point of investment.

[@sirram_e]

she is a sidegrade which is fine ig...

[@TAideo]

hey i have c6 dori!

[@StanTheWoz]

The thing people need to realize about speedrunning and meta is that it's just as much of a personal preference as playing your favorite character. Once you get below 3 minutes for each chamber there's absolutely no in game incentive for shorter clear times, it's just for the sake of it, same as making weaker characters like Xinyan or Dehya work, or your favorite weird team, or whatever. Great if people want to do that, but it's no more valid than any other goal.

[@r-7498]

Since genshin is a non competitive gacha game so far, the prevalent overlooked objective of playing this game is about getting characters that you really like, then building them so you can enjoy the game with those characters. For whales it's almost nothing, but for f2ps that means finishing as much game content as possible and that includes spiral abyss and it demands well built characters and decent combat performance, or just get lucky, which we can't control when it will happen. That's the broader way of defining genshin meta in my humble opinion Even in competitive games, the vast majority of players are not bothered with meta, they play games just to have fun, or just to spend some free time (crazy right?), which means they stuck in low ranks, small game knowledge, and so little skill improvement. The discussion of meta is quite an interesting topic, but I think discussing it in a more competitive settings is more appropriate. Or discuss it with like minded people that cares about deep game mechanics like most of the kqm community are. For the general public, it's too farfetched and so hard to understand

[@Heatranoveryou]

Its funny because the traditional use of meta would be talking about the current floor 12. Whatever floor 12 is is the meta and we build our teams around that. But genshin players are more concerned about individual characters because there are completely separate games being played. Gacha and time/resource management. the gacha and resin metas are more important than the floor 12 meta.

[@Axterix13]

They relate, though. I mean, if people didn't care about floor 12, pretty much nothing else would matter. A good chunk of events don't use your character's stats. Of the combat ones, most are balanced around level 80, without cons, non-maxed talents, and pretty bad artifacts. So if you have built your teams, well, you don't even look at what the event's mechanic is, and still score 3 or 4x the score needed to get all the rewards. This is part of why people invest in hyperbloom and national. With these teams, they can clear the hardest content we are likely to face. And they're omni-tools, useful in pretty much every Abyss. Which is why when we get something like the Wenut, a critter designed to counter that meta, people complain. Of course, this is mostly true for people who partake in Genshin content outside of the game. Odds are, the majority of players don't really, and have no clue about any of it ;)

[@RaikouPKM]

Interesting discussions, particularly constellations and their impact on Character vs character powercreep. But ultimately without significant content powercreep , character vs character or constellations vs constellations dont matter.

[@BlueHenning]

Meta is so easy to define, the most beautiful Waifus are meta, that's it

[@Yagmur-nf6yh]

Neuvillette is to hydro what Ganyu is to cryo: I don't think we'll ever get a better onfield dps for that specific element, ever.

[@CRANEREVIEWS]

Waifu meta powercreep

[@TheMoonestOne]

40:15 About that, couldn't theorycrafters try to focus more on teams that the character actually makes a difference? For example, in Dehya teams, instead of saying "just slap Mono Pyro" that actually works with any character, I remember Zajef saying like "you could try Mona and only Dehya's kit can benefit from that", or how now Dehya can be a good Neuvillette teammate and only she provides those benefits. Another example, I like Kaveh but I know he's bad. If we see his teams of Hyperbloom or even Nilou bloom, they're good Kaveh teams, but they're not necessarily good teams (Nahida would "powercreep" him in every way). However, maybe if there's a way to make him work in a team that uses his strengths that Nahida doesn't have, it could actually be a good team that only he can provide. In this example, which I may be just coping, a good "Kaveh Team" could be Kaveh, Fischl, Xianyun and Furina. This would be a Non-Quickbloom team (there would be aggravate/spread and blooms, but only just a few hyperblooms, I think). But Kaveh can pop those blooms and get some benefits from it, while Spreading with every Plunge and being buffed by Xianyun and Furina. Or is it also boring to ignore the "easy solutions" such as Hyperbloom/Mono Pyro?

[@Plainguy8]

wooo, I'm early

[@triii8939]

there no prove im leaving

[@Heatranoveryou]

i dont think powercreep is inherently bad its the context in which its occuring. imo powercreep in genshin is necessary to keep things interesting since the content is pulled characters.

[@Syokool]

Stfu hoyoverse dev, no one wants to promote gacha addiction with that justification. In fact, we need more content, not more characters. The only big fault genshin has is having events as a premium content, limited by time and unavailable afterwards.

[@banjoowo4001]

Powercreep will legit destroy the point of reruning characters, imagine investing months to vertically invest your main just to get it powercreeped

[@Heatranoveryou]

@@banjoowo4001 that's true but other gachas rerun bad characters too

[@youraverageguy4930]

What Genshin needs isn't powercreep, but rather _diversity._ It's like specializations in ecology, in which a certain species would evolve in a unique way to avoid competition with other species by filling a certain niche role in the ecosystem. A lot of games manage to avoid powercreep by adding layers to their gameplay, with different directions of meta. A tank is able to avoid competition with a DPS because their defining trait is survivability over damage, and some games revolve around long endurance fights where survival is sometimes way more important than your level of DPS. Genshin's toughest combat mostly revolve around pure offense and DPS checks, and your only method to measure your performance is only by seeing how fast you can kill your enemies. In comparison, some games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Code Vein, Dragon's Dogma and Monster Hunter have various methods of approach such as body part breaks (to gain better/more rewards/drops), outlasting your opponent (the fucking rock door Great Shield in Dark Souls/Elden Ring pvp where you shield bash your opponent to death as they hopelessly try to put a dent on you) or simply killing the opponent before it kills you. The Genshin TCG also has a way healthier ecosystem because you can either win by overwhelming your opponent within 2-3 rounds or simply tank and heal to outlast them by dragging the fight up to 7-9 rounds (which is particularly effective when your opponent doesn't have a healer). "Meta" in every other game has various directions - Crowd Control meta, Tanking meta, Support meta, DPS meta, or whatever. Genshin only has the DPS meta because its toughest content revolves around DPS checks.

[@swype7046]

Surprised to see this in my feed havent touched genshin since yae release. Seems like i made the right decision given 36* abyss is still the only real goal. 💩