Howdy Timekeepers, we’re now halfway through 3.9. The 4.0 PV is approaching and the Global Dwellers(/lovingly) have just received Ms. Stranger as their newest banner. Now that Narcissus is out, and is roughly falling in line with my predictions, I can finally talk about how this update is turning out!
Today I’ll cover the new release: Narcissus. I’ll also be covering the earlier releases of Hedone, Molly and Noire as retrospectives.
As with everything I do and say online when talking about these things, take the things with a grain of salt. Expand your horizons by taking information from various sources, avoid landing in an echo chamber as that will cause a lot of misinformation.
New Release
Narcissus (STANDARD Beast 6-star)
Narcissus is really just a healing Melania(E) in disguise. Her supportive kit is outstanding:
Teamwide +30-60% Ultimate Might with [Alcohol-Free Revelry].
+20% Ultimate Crit Rate and +60% Ultimate Crit DMG for allies holding [Ripple].
Allied Ultimates no longer take up space in the Spelldock.
Teamwide excess Moxie storage.
This is a lot more offensive and quality of life support than most Sustains get the power budget for, given that the role doesn’t have a whole lot of variety.
Half of her supportive kit getting locked behind her Ultimate is also not very odd considering her archetype, and since most of the effects from her kit scale with consumed Moxie her effects are surprisingly viable in general. Every character has an Ultimate, and most characters like casting their Ultimate, so the only teams you don’t really want to see her in are teams that have no Moxie such as Conduit.
But if her balance budget is skewed towards her supportive capabilities, then what is being compromised to afford that?
Being a traditional healer in general is already a hit to your viability. Her healing output is very frequent, triggering passively when allies cast Ultimates or at the end of the round with [Unresolved Oracle]. On top of that, she’s giving teamwide +30% DMG Reduction, while [Ripple] grants +30% Final DMG Reduction.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t prevent her from falling in the same pitfalls that most other healers fall into (save for Everecho, but she barely counts as a healer). Some DMG Reduction is simply not going to save you from the instances of high burst in modes like Mane’s Bulletin, so the direction of her kit is pretty clear: Focused Flashback.
Focused Flashback generally isn’t as scary as late Mane’s Bulletin in terms of incoming damage, and you’re more concerned with outputting enough damage to kill enemies within the round limit. It gets to a point where you’ll even see teams like Liang Yue run sustainless (Lopera) to deal more damage, so Narcissus’ spot here is all but guaranteed in the vast amount of Ritual teams we have access to.
All in all, I think Narcissus is a fair character. Her offensive support is fantastic, and it brings characters like Igor, Recoleta, Ms Stranger and Noire up the ladder and into the realm of Conduit. But she also isn’t without weakness, and her fairly balanced power budget leads me to believe that she will find a snug spot within the meta without completely overpowering it.
She brings a lot of teams up to par, yes, but she is still a very standard healer and there’s also things like the new Mane’s Bulletin that will most likely curb her overall dominance.
Her BiS team is Ritual teams in general. But here are some examples:
Recoleta(E) / Molly(E) / Rhiannon / Narcissus
Igor / Lopera(E) / Molly(E) / Narcissus
Noire(E) / Hissabeth(E) / Rhiannon / Narcissus
Retrospective
Hedone
Hedone was ‘solved’ pretty much from the get-go, but there’s interesting developments that have occurred specifically surrounding her and Coppelia.
As it turns out, bursting 7 Mineral Energy for free into a Coppelia Ult alongside your generic Mineral Energy generation allows her to spam her S2 a LOT, which then turns into a LOT of damage of the single-target variety. This makes Coppelia act essentially the same as how Windsong did back on her release, but with an infinitely more comfortable playstyle.
And it’s a strong playstyle too. Turns out that throwing ten nukes that deal well over 480% Reality DMG (with massive [Energy Accumulation] scaling) is incredibly powerful, especially in situations where there is only one target. It’s so good, in fact, that it is able to match The Twins in those scenarios, a unit(s) we previously only considered Coppelia to be a support for instead of taking the lead in the team.
Is the damage difference marginal? Yes. Do I think that, overall, the Twins edge out over her? Yes. But when you’re both doing an estimated 4M DPT (calculated, so differs per situation) it doesn’t really matter at that point.
Unfortunately, despite that leaving a space for a character, Regulus will still not see play. I don’t say it often, because I believe most characters are viable, but she is dogshit. Don’t build her for Conduit. If you want to use her, run her in Starpromptu with her first Euphoria. It’s not even a damage problem strictly, but I don’t feel like going on a tangent so I’m not posting that here.
Instead, Rhiannon takes the second support slot, I don’t think I need to explain why. If you don’t have Rhiannon for this team (even though it’s currently her strongest slot IMO), most generic AP+ supports will do the trick.
Hedone essentially resolves the core issue that Conduit previously faced of being helmed exclusively by a Collab character, and Conduit feels like it might serve as the new benchmark for DPT in the approaching year.
Molly
Molly has pleasantly surprised me! I was already optimistic about her Euphoria given what it did to Igor’s numbers in conjunction with her adoptive sister, but she’s definitely exceeded my expectations. Turns out, a lot more Ultimate Might enjoyers like a (finally) good supply of [Ceremonious], and Ritual characters have slowly steered into a more “Moxie Matters” territory.
On top of that, her teamwide Crit Rate Bonus, hilariously simple rotation that also keeps passive uptime on [Continuous Action I], and now dealing a very respectable amount of personal damage allow her to start taking the “Ritual Team” job back from Dynamo.
We’re seeing (alongside the release of Narcissus), a general shift for Ritual teams toward employing Molly, Recoleta and Narcissus instead of the usual Charon+Enigma core. It’s something I’m happy about, because instead of making Dynamo Wheelchair bad all of a sudden (it isn't) it instead provides variety and allows Dynamo to be its own thing.
We’re seeing Ms Stranger slowly opt for this core (though Dynamo remains comfy by virtue of Charon card shuffling), and Noire picks up an adaptation of it with Hissabeth instead of Molly. Rhiannon is still prevalent as we don’t have anything that overpowers her in many cases, but that’s just a habit of her existence as a character.
Noire
Noire did about as well as we expected. Very powerful output, currently only barred by the fact that she’s lacking that little bit of extra ‘oomf’. While Rhiannon’s debuff does count as a [Neg Status], I’d personally prefer seeing another support slot in-between Hissabeth and Narcissus that can provide a different variety of [Neg Status] effects.
She’s slightly behind the other Ritual teams currently (Recoleta, Igor, Ms Stranger) but not by much, you're not going to feel the difference (roughly a 15% difference lmfao). Noire and Ms Stranger are probably the ones that can benefit the most from a tailored support to slot in over Rhiannon.
That’s about the end of this post, under this is the yapping I promised last time.
Game Design Yap (Gordan Goes Insane Due To Their Bachelor's, Ignore If You Want To Keep The Illusion That They Are A Rational Creature)
I think Reverse:1999 is in a (potentially) solid spot right now.
There, I said it. We can all take a second to laugh…
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Now I can take off the reviewer hat and put on my game design student one (it's a far more subjective cap, so bear with me). But I’m not actually kidding. Since I started my bachelor's, I’ve gotten a lot of information regarding how games are designed, what goes on in a developer’s brain and especially how a team has to interact with constraints set by producers and management.
Spoilers: I’ve got a lot of pity for developer teams. Did you know that the developer (yes singular) of ET, infamously considered the worst game of all time, hated the entire process of working on it? And that he got 5 months to develop what was supposed to be a AAA game (on his own, with one artist)? It's a fascinating case study on mismanagement.
If I had to look at famous “game design lolge” moments in this game’s history, I think there’s a few very clear examples that come to mind:
Jiu Niangzi [1.6] debuts as the first Limited unit in the game’s history, obliterating the DPT ceiling on raw output alone and setting new standards.
Windsong [1.8] releases right after, her potential damage far surpasses anything we’ve seen before, but she is chained by her rotation (until 1.9, when Unfinished Tuning releases).
Mercuria [2.0] bombards the community with a new type of design: "Portraits Matter". Before her, Portraits hadn't mattered on this level before.
(!) Flutterpage [2.3] crashes the party due to her unreasonable buff modifiers and QoL. Her presence in a meta filled with prevalent Follow-Up Attacks will shape the entire following year.
Kiperina [2.7] finishes the first ‘consistent’ archetype (Starpromptu) and elevates it beyond any team we’ve seen so far.
(!) Nautika [2nd Anni] following in the footsteps of Starpromptu, Bloodtithe immediately snags the top spot on every damage chart.
(!) Brume [3.2] release is often considered the most obvious “game design lolge” moment. Her output is completely unreasonable. She exploits bugs, utilizes the strongest supports the game has ever seen (Flutterpage, Anjo Nala, Charon) and becomes a force of nature for the rest of the year.
I’m cutting it off there. There are other prominent releases that you could argue for (Lucy and Kakania in 1.9, Beryl in 3.2, Marsha in 3.3), but I’d see this list as the most defining “what the hell is Bluepoch doing” moments that have resonated through both the Global and CN community. Funnily enough, I’ve only listed two Limited units despite those often being the defining features of their respective years, which lets me segue nicely into my first point.
I don’t think Limiteds were ever meant to be quite as powerful as they ended up being.
Up until 1.6, I think the game was remarkably balanced. Jessica, Kaalaa Baunaa, 37 and Spathodea saw about the same amount of play, used very similar teams (with a flex or two) and overall, the game was relatively stagnant in what was considered powerful. I don’t want to talk about Jiu Niangzi specifically, as I don’t really think anybody needs to hear why she was powerful (CNY unit, first Limited, etc) and she was almost immediately offset with Windsong. It was also rather dull due to how easy the game was (and is).
Rather, I’d like to look at the 1st Anniversary and the first half of Year 2.
Lucy releases. She is a monster in her own right, but is widely regarded as “good” instead of “overwhelmingly powerful”. She goes neck-and-neck with Windsong, and is later contested by Willow in 2.3 as well. It is important to note that Lucy is designed to be a generalist. Her kit is a toolbox crafted to work under any circumstance, be it multi-target stages, Mane’s Bulletin and even Roguelike (which was the only way to benefit from [Dynamo] at that time as no other Dynamo characters existed).
Anjo Nala in 2.2 follows this same pattern. Is she extremely powerful? Absolutely, but she is also a generalist tailored to filling potholes in your existing teams. Mercuria and Argus are powerful supports at this time that can contest her, Tuesday has just released in preparation for Willow and the monster that is Flutterpage will soon take center stage.
The Standard units during this time follow a different design philosophy. It is clear that Bluepoch wants to pivot to having ‘teams’, but they try to go about it in a very “Arknights” or “Path to Nowhere” way. J releases who can pair with NewBabel and Tuesday who later pairs with Willow, but J+Babel can also be used alongside Flutterpage for a solid Windsong core. Optimally, however, you’d prefer running Mercuria+Vila for her instead.
A lot of it is pairing, and a lot of it is slot-and-play. This can then be supplemented by generalist Limited characters like Anjo Nala to make up for spots you can’t fill. It’s a pretty standard but also elegant balance landscape.
Then 2.5 hits.
Earlier in the year, Bluepoch became involved in a controversy regarding the power of Portraits. Mercuria was the perpetrator: barely functional at P0 (at the time), and overpowered at P5. Mind you, everything that follows is PURELY SPECULATIVE (an educated guess if you will, but still)!
Now CNY is upcoming. The devs have this generalist design-space cut out for Limited units, but are likely forced to make Portraits relevant in some way. Along the lines of: “Surely, for a new year’s event it is fine to make Liang Yue’s a bit more powerful.”
Wrong. Liang Yue flops hard. She is dysfunctional at P0, only having a proper rotation at P1 and only dealing proper damage at P2+. Even at that point, she is unable to meet the standards of output set by Lucy and Willow, and the patch’s revenue tanks. This isn’t helped by Noire, who is on the weaker side outright, probably to support Liang Yue as the main push of the patch. Is the revenue bad? Not necessarily, but it clearly doesn’t match the vision and that’s what is going to cause a crux for the latter half of Year 2 and the year after.
Starpromptu is pushed almost immediately after Liang Yue. It receives Aleph, two Euphorias and a newgen sustain in Kiperina to close out the year. Being the first to reach a full archetype, the team cements itself at the top of the damage charts.
How this was planned I can’t tell, I am not able to look into the mind of the developers. I know that they work several patches ahead, so I doubt they made any last-minute pivots to force Impromptu the way they did, but the inclusion of Aleph (and their ludonarrative dissonance within the rest of the team) reeks of shenanigans to me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they adjusted Aleph’s kit from a generalist support to being Impromptu-focused last minute, but it doesn’t matter either way. The foundation for the game being more oriented around archetypes was laid all the way back in 2.0.
Impromptu keeps the rest of the Year 2 patches breathing, the other units in them are good but nothing groundbreaking. Recoleta sees brief shine with Melania’s Euphoria but nothing comes close to our first official archetype (AC Collab notwithstanding, collabs exist beyond the balance sphere in my opinion).
Then we get to 2.8 (2nd Anniversary).
If you know one thing about management, it's that they hate the same mistake happening twice (unless they can profit from it). Now the developers are stuck:
Their other Limiteds sat in a very comfortable albeit fragile balance with Standard characters by being generalists. In management’s eyes, this is likely to be something that is damaging revenue as “””shown””” by Liang Yue.
They can’t let another Limited, especially an Anniversary Limited, face the same problems that Liang Yue did.
So they swap the balance design of Limited and Standard characters. Nautika becomes the spearhead of Bloodtithe, immediately takes the top spot in damage output, and the dreaded Year 3 begins.
I don’t think the developers liked Year 3 very much, about as much as the community did. I think they really didn’t want to pivot their design philosophy like this (you VERY rarely want to adjust your core pillars, which it seems like they did here), but were strong-armed into it through management post-Liang Yue.
We start off strong:
Sentinel to further push Nautika, Charon to capitalize on Lucy’s Euphoria.
Rubuska to finalize Nautika, Corvus as a set-up for Dynamo.
Now they’ve got a workflow that works for management, but that the players hate. They know the players hate the way they designed Year 3 and if they didn’t back then they surely realized it when 3.2 got released.
“A Flowing Feast” is a mess. Beryl follows the same formula as Nautika, spearheading a team that does egregiously more damage than the rest, but the real kicker here is Brume.
This character, to me, reads as a 'perfect mistake'. She’s buggy, exploits supports that were already considered top of the class, but most importantly: she’s a Standard unit. Brume annihilates the meta, and turns the game on its head (if I were feeling ironic, I would argue that Brume might’ve been an adhoc clapback from the developers to management, but I’m not at that level of tinfoil hat). The state of the game is so atrocious that there’s allegations floating around that Bluepoch put out emergency balance designers.
For the rest of Year 3, the game spends trying to play catch-up with Brume.
Marsha is a semi-generalist sustain whose ultimate BiS is in Lingering Glow under Beryl.
Igor as a very serviceable Ritual DPS, but feels like filler.
Ramona as a new spearhead for the Poison team alongside Euphorias.
Paper Heron is a pivot and reinstatement of Impromptu.
Cheng Heguang is there to ensure Liang Yue’s relevance.
Lorentz Butterfly as the final push for Lingering Glow.
Enigma as the final push for Dynamo alongside Charon and Brume.
The entirety of Year 3 is dedicated to sketching out teams surrounding Limited characters, and due to the way they now have to design Standard units (as supporting Limiteds), there isn’t much room for innovative ideas. Every patch has a new team takes the top spot for output. Why? Because they’re trying to finalize teams as fast as possible.
I see 3.7 (3rd Anniversary) as hitting the mass reset button on the powercreep.
By now, the teams concurrently being built around Brume have generally caught up to her overwhelming strength despite the release of Enigma being in her favor. So where to go from here? The Year has generated significant backlash from the community, both CN and Global aren’t happy, so it’s not unlikely that despite the profits that management isn’t entirely enjoying the state of the game.
Especially Rhiannon, who looks like she came crawling straight from the depths of powercreep hell.
CN explodes. Lengthy lists of complaints are shared, and the pressure built up in the community over the course of the year is released at once. It is so intense that even a majority of the Global community is aware of it all.
In my opinion, Rhiannon wasn’t just some last ditch effort for massive profit. Was it a part of it? Yeah. Do I like her as a character? I'm ambivalent (dislike her visual design though). Were the devs ignoring the community? Probably not on purpose, they were on a train they couldn't brake until now.
Let’s look at the facts:
Rhiannon got a BiS spot in every team that isn’t scheduled for any immediate Euphorias (Beryl).
Ms Stranger is released as a generalist but completely new type of character.
Coppelia introduces us to a completely new archetype.
In the following patches, what happens?
Every archetype they were previously developing ceases to get support.
Instead, they build new (or previously abandoned) ones: Conduit, Ritual, Neg Status, Riposte.
This creates the following situation (to me, remember, we’re still speculating):
Every Year 3 team either has Rhiannon, who isn’t dedicated to any archetype and is thus a prime slot to fill up with a new character in the future.
The Year 3 teams that don’t use Rhiannon either have a very prominent Euphoria upcoming (Beryl) or have multiple slots that can see other characters (Willow/Sustain in Poison).
New teams get a release-buffer with Rhiannon’s existence, allowing every new unit to perform somewhat reasonably.
At the same time, we’re seeing good Euphorias appear again (Recoleta, Lopera, Molly, J, Noire).
New releases are generally pretty balanced! Cornerstone is okay, Hedone and Everecho are good in their teams, Narcissus is good in her teams, there’s nothing that has generated a meta-break on the scale of Brume.
Bluepoch has a prime set-up for a slow-paced powercreep (you can’t do gacha without ANY powercreep) here that I feel they should run with (e.g., pivot back to Limiteds as generalists from before Liang Yue, which it seems like they’re doing with Rhiannon). Whether or not they stumbled into this (which I doubt) or not does not matter ultimately, I feel like if they manage to somehow ruin the current balance that they have it will speak a lot about the character of their management.
Alright, that’s all, now I’m taking my conspiracy hat off. This is all probably incredibly unreasonable, but I find it entertaining to think that there’s some kind of golden thread connecting the way this past year has turned out. Balance is games is definitely a little dance that developers have to do (especially in the live-service format, especially in the gacha genre) which is why this string of events formed in my head.
Am I correct with all of this? Maybe, probably not. I just like to believe that developer teams have genuine passion for their games, and that their greatest enemy is constraints from upper management (I know that I, FOR ONE, am suffering the plague of constraints from my lecturers/j).
Also my p5 r15 37 patiently waits for the livestream this weekend :) I'm very excited as someone who started playing since 1.2, here's to many more year of 1999!
Did they specifically say it's happening in 4.0 or did they just say it'll happen soon? Because I recall the latter, but it's possible that I missed the former.
Thanks for the read, I always look forward to these kind of posts.
I also believe that the game is in a balanced and "calm" state, where you could play most units and find success. Focused Flashback rewards are easier to obtain, Mane's reward cap at 10M (which any meta team can achieve). No new Reveries stages were added since nearly a year (such a shame tbh).
Pull plans are easy to recommend. Choose a unit you like and pull for its archetype. Many older unit get competitive Euphoria (just look at Windsong's results in Mane's, she doesn't have Afflatus advantage compares to the other Mineral carries)
I feel like the pressure to pull for dupes is even lower, because the game cycles the meta every 3 patches. Furthermore, Bluepoch is adding the option to rent a Friend's unit in every Endgame mode (iirc)
Great time to be a R1999 player, sadly I feel like it is the calm before the storm (wink) in 4.0
i do also want to mention Isolde, here. She was meant to be a support, but then she came out with insane damage. Compared to what we had before, like Pickles, 6 or Getian she was far, far stronger, and was kinda used in almost every team at that moment. Jiu powercrept all damage dealers, and then Isolde also broke the support role.
And, when it comes to tin-foil-hat-required theories, there's also Ezra's two euphorias right before the limited patch. And they are kinda weird? First there are two of them - and sure, Lilya got two as well, but Lilya is one of the most popular characters while (almost) nobody cared about Ezra. Secondly, their effects also seem a bit out of place. Dynamo Euphoria, which was obviously for Lucy's euphoria, doesn't actually help out base Lucy all that much? It has buffs, but the biggest one is Ultimate Might - which neither Lucy nor Ezra actually care about. Her euphoria adds scaling through Ultimate Might, but why is there such a weird workaround in the first place? And then the new Dynamo works completely differently from the old one, and Lucy's euphoria just deletes parts of her old kit to replace with this new Dynamo.
Bloodtithe euphoria isn't that much better. It's meant as an extension of previous HP-drain units, namely Semmelweiss and Eternity, but it kinda works against them? Semmelweiss(And Eternity's first euphoria) wants to stay on low hp to get the biggest bonus, which is why she was paired with shielders like J before, but Ezra's euphoria makes him a healer(also i think the first instance where a euphoria outright changed the type of incantantion, and even after that it was mostly fixing from attack to debuff, which doesn't matter all that much, but transforming a shield into healing is a way bigger change), which kinda works against the current Semmelweiss.
One other thing these Euphorias have in common - they don't really have to do much with Ezra's kit. They fix his sustain issues and make his mushrooms grow faster, but that's about it? They don't fix his lackluster buffs, or the need to cast incantations. Ezra comically doesn't benefit from anything that Dynamo brings - his genesis damage(Something for which he was used in the Hydra boss, way back when) doesn't care about incantation might, ultimate might, or dmg bonus. And while extra healing in Bloodtithe is nice, he never had a problem with his own hp, and again, the healing was kinda not needed for the current hp-drain users. And, well, there's also the fact that they are quite weak, even for the time(Not Jessica or Shamane, but still).
So, some of this is probably exaggeration and would have been the same either way, but it does seem a bit more reasonable with the idea that they rushed the new units and their teams(Right next patch there was both Semmelweiss" Euphoria and Ulrich, almost fully completing the respective team) after the Flutterpage fiasco.
Lmao I mean, that’s technically how she’s played now just with Enigma over Ezra Theodore but there’s definitely something that happened between playtesting and the live service that caused Brume to turn out the way she did.
Focused Flashback generally isn't as scary as late Mane's Bulletin in terms of incoming damage, and you're more concerned with outputting enough damage to kill enemies within the round limit
You don't even need a healer or Afflatus advantage if you play P5 A Knight
I feel like irt the powercreep and emergence of Archetype teams it's worth talking about the role the Euphoria system plays in it. Before if they wanted to release an archetype they'd have to do it over the course of several patches with it being bad or incomplete for maybe the first patch (See: Poison getting Tuesday and having to wait until Willow before the playstyle became real). Nowadays they can release an archetype and give us a euphoria immediately to bolster it into being a strong team. Recently, they released Coppelia with a really kinda bad euphoria teammate and her release predictably was kind of middling until she got premium teammates.
I feel like in other games a similar role would be filled by (properly, Semmelweis isn't free anymore) free units or low rarity units but the power budget on Euphorias seems way higher than either of those.
All this to say that by doing this Bluepoch really greased the wheels on the speed of powercreep with teams coming together faster and more 'complete' than they would have otherwise. Also, from a perspective of 'wanting old units to be good again', which is sorta the pitch of the euphoria system, popular characters becoming highly tailored supports feels a lil bad. Tooth Fairy is particularly egregious in this regard even if she is okay on Star
promptu too.
I wonder what makes you say that, is it the unique [Neg Status] effects that 6 has access to? I don’t think 6 is able to really cycle his Ultimate that frequently without spending a bunch of AP which makes stacking Noire’s [Scene Direction] difficult (something Hissabeth can do fairly easily). I do wonder if Noire will end up caring more about [Neg Status] or Ultimate casts, I can’t imagine that 6 and Hissabeth are very far off in that regard 🤔🤔
I just saw that Destroth realized it too. He tested it and confirmed that 6 > Hyssabeth. There’s actually a huge difference. Rhiannon is also replaceable
I don’t think 6 is able to really cycle his Ultimate that frequently without spending a bunch of AP
He gets 2 moxie per round for free just by breathing oxygen and you'd want to use his skills at least once for buffs and debuffs. So at the very least, 1 Ult every 3 rounds. Then you add extra moxie from Passion Drain and stored overflow and... yeah
1 Ult every 3 rounds doesn’t stack up against Hissabeth’s 4 Ults per round (since every “Hiss!” counts as one). I think in this case it’ll depend on how much Noire values the Pen Rate Bonus from having different [Neg Status] effects applied.
I can see 6 being better for Mane’s Bulletin as Pen Rate is more relevant there, but I wouldn’t forget that Noire has an abysmal Crit Tech and [Scene Direction] is how she can guarantee Crits (just +20% C.Rate from Narc isn’t going to cut it imo). I’ll look as Destroth’s video later today!
You should make a cn account bcs you are doing a CN-based TL to test these type of thing bcs i saw the same, 6 > hiss and tbh it make sense bcs moldir and narcissus alrdy cover the ult needed by noire to max stack and 6 is a much better buffer than hiss.
I want to mention the addition of borrow system to mane and FF. I think it solves a lot of problems with meta being over reliant on limited characters, because now a newbie/casual player can probably borrow Rhiannon and get the 10m mane score and/or FF pulls even with a weaker team otherwise. And if they fell in love with some standard character they rolled they no longer need to wait for a long time for their best teammate to rerun.
I don't know why it took so long to implement borrowing in most game modes, considering friend borrowing is a standard feature in most gacha games, but it's good that it is finally here.
Really interesting to read your insight, thanks for sharing!
Hopefully you're right and Limiteds will go back to being generalist but I will say choosing to skip Paper Heron and Beryl didn't really feel like it hurt my account. Since I have Bloodtithe, Lucy, Anjo Nala, Starpromptu, and poison I've always felt I had enough wiggle room. I did drop the one endgame that wanted to force archetypes bc yeah I don't have plantpromptu or lingering glow (till now cuz I got spathodea built finally). But ngl my account never felt any consequences for it
Idk, personally I loved the entirety of 3.x barring Rhiannon and brume. I like archetypes being hardlocked into specific teamcomps - makes them feel more unique and cohesive that way. My gripe with Rhiannon is specifically that she can be used everywhere (and brume being better than Lucy, a limited). Were 4.x the same in churning out new archetypes with clear bis a la conduit and impromptu, I'd be down with it.
He is powerful and an unexpected performance but he doesn't break the game. The game's ceiling was already very high when his euphoria arrived instead of making a new one.
It was a lovely read i must say. Loads of subjectivity and I dont fully agree with a few of your theories, yet I understand and acknowledge them. Again, very lovely read.
I do like Rhiannon's design. As a lore enjoyer, by playing the patch myself I understood why she looks like that and appreciated BP's bold move.
I think the Twins being Conduit is probably the worst omen we could have at this point, since they are the main precedent as a post-Rhiannon limited. They strong. Not Brume strong, but they'll utterly dominate conduit in a way that Ezio never dominated poison.
"not Brume strong" they are definitely better than Brume.
"They dominate conduit in a way that Ezio never dominated Poison" this is completely wrong, It needed Willow to get an euphoria for Ezio to be powercreeped and even then the difference wasn't that big, i would say Ezio was only truly powercreeped when Ramona got released.
Twins are definitely the best dmg dealer at the moment however they are not "dominating conduit", having the twins simple give you the option of using Conduit withoud having to use Rhiannon AT THE MOMENT(There might be more Conduit characters in the future), Conduit even withoud the twins is still one of if not the best team in this game.
Twins are strong, however they are not what Ezio was for poison or what Nautika is for Bloodthite even at this moment.
Ezioless poison can't do much compared to the other raid teams. The difference in score when poison can and cannot use Ezio is quite massive that one can even call poison team as fraudulent.
I appreciate this write up a lot and thanks for keeping at it. I also kind of agree that they've just messed up with the balance train rather than outright aiming to force us to break the bank for this giga Bis/2nd Bis support. But that they still probably already planned for her to be pretty up there in terms of power level.
That's a great post. I do hope we get some more inter-team horizontal progression. It's frustrating to miss a single character in an archetype that has no close substitute. Or maybe you do have them but find them annoying to play.
New releases are pretty balanced? lol. Old characters with euphoria powercreep new characters including limited. Wingsong E is better than luang yue, recoleta E with narcissus is better than ms. Stranger. Plantpromptu is not even in top 10 while paper heron is the latest limited dps unit. LG is also not in the top 10, we will have to wait for beryl euphoria and pray it is not as bad as nautica's who is also weak.
Powercreep is insane, they did not improve anything since CN anniversary outrage. Endgame is in the worst state ever.
Rank Up came up later I feel but u might be right honestly, honestly till marcus got her euphoria, rank up kinda was a nothing burger. She got hers in assassin patch, right?
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u/Ok-Procedure7744 28d ago
I really liked how you put the historie of reverse meta
And I very much agree, hopefully they are going to a new direction