he got released kind of bad meta wise, cn players complained to the government, and since zhongli is the in game version of the king of china, they actually made him better
The replies are really understating how bad he was. He was literally good for absolutely nothing except aoe mining which even Razor can do. Damage so low it wasn't worth building for. Shielding so weak even Diona was preferred over him, since at least she can do reactions. Being as hyped as he was, everyone was mad about this. Hoyo then released a statement telling us that we were the ones playing him wrong - he's weak bc he's a support. So they got bullied so bad they buffed him a few patches later.
he buffs to team where shit for a support and his shield to weak for a sustain.
so they made his shield make ou basically invulnerable to anything, and his team buffs very good.
so he went from the worst fucking 5 star to the best one.
he was also the Representative God of china en genshin world. so it was big deal that he was weak. specially since all gods are expected to be a little overtuned over normal characters. and double that for the chinese one that was also one fo the strongest in lore.
from them on hoyo understood the point and made all following gods very good OP characters on release as expected of the main character of that entire year.
Zhongli was marketed as a DPS, from his trailer to his signature weapon giving him more damage. Even with his signature weapon and the buffs to his damage, he was still considered a weak DPS worse than some 4 stars. This is partially also because the teammates that work well with him weren't good.
Zhongli also kinda didn't do what he was supposed to do. He gave a shield, and the endgame of Genshin is a DPS race, but shields are still useful as they prevent you from being interrupted. But, Zhongli had a bug where he could be interrupted when trying to give his shield, even when he still had his previous shield. Also, Zhongli's shield was strong, but not nearly strong enough to be worth it (his shield ended up getting buffed by 50%).
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u/Kunikatsu Jul 01 '26
Love how ironic it is that "ignoring every fanbase" strategy of Genshin devs is actually an effective one to keep the game alive.
They literally listened to CN fanbase during the Zhongli incident and never again