As a goodbye to the passing year, below are my ramblings of an archon whose birthday just passed, and whom I am deeply invested in
Recently with the arrival zhongli's birthday, there has been an uptick in zhongli content posted on bilibili, in particular zhongli guides and abyss clears. Unlike the traditional EN guides that focus on his support capabilities, CN players are very passionate about building and playing zhongli as a DPS and these guides delve deep into his DPS playstyle, in particular enabling him as on-field/hypercarry DPS.
As you all know, I personally play a lot of physical zhongli and especially engage in or at the very least, attempt abyss speedrunning with him so I am well-versed in zhongli's builds and teams surrounding his DPS playstyle. While these guides are not new to me, I still watch them to gleam any insight I can and determine if there is anything new to learn and apply. A recent but common conclusion from the guides and clears is that the hypercarry DPS playstyle, in particular phys zhongil/pikeli, has pretty much reached its limits and its future remains uncertain. Unfortunately, I am inclined to agree having personally experienced this bottleneck myself. The current contemporary phys zhongli team relies on the core of furina, mika and yun jin to synergistically leverage zhongli's low NA scaling but fast atk speed in order to drive yun jin's flat dmg buffs. The issue arises from the advent of natlan where not only are bosses having higher HP but the abyss HP multiplier also increasing from 2.5x to 3x to compensate for the release of stronger DPS, supports and artifact sets that natlan offers.
The last major upgrade to this zhongli team, furina, came in 4.2, more than an entire year ago. However the bigger issue lies in yun jin being a buffer released in genshin version 2, that offers a buff while adequate during her release, is becoming increasingly insufficient as HP pools increase. Due to zhongli inherently having a low base atk for 5 star and low NA multipliers to balance his fast atk speed, yun jin and other sources of flat dmg buffs like crescent pike have always been preferred over bennet despite being an attack scaler. However, the overall damage of the team, despite being a highly synergistic team is becoming increasingly less relevant in the face of the inflated abyss HP pools.
The prevailing sentiment has been to compensate for this with vertical investment. In particular, furina's C2 is highly recommended. However, even this has its limits where investment beyond furina's C2 would have diminishing returns until her C6 that obsoletes the need for a healer. The current absolute best phys zhongli team runs C6 furina and replaces mika with C2/4 xilonen to not just buff furina's dmg but also zhongli's geo dmg and simultaneously functions as geo battery to alleviate yun jin's ER concerns. Yet this an extremely steep vertical investment requiring a minimum of 11 cost which will constitute having to sacrifice many characters for while still facing the criticism of being "carried by C6 furina" and brings into question the emphasis of zhongli's significance in the team.
While Zhongli's offensively flaws were sufficiently compensated for in the past with crescent pike and yun jin, they are becoming increasingly prominent and difficult to remedy without a new character, weapon, artifact or combination of the preceding. Regardless, I remain devoted to the character I started my journey in genshin with and remain hopeful that further support for this team, direct of indirect, will be released in natlan or even senzhnaya.
I would like to end this verbose reflection of mine by adapting an elegy from zhongli: I have no regrets in my pursuit to build and elevate zhongli beyond a support. Should the day ever come where this team truly falls off irredeemably in the abyss, my attempts, my efforts and my fruition will continue to shine like gold in my memories.
Fun fact, I actually have an old account with C2 Zhongli that I pulled all the way back from his first release in version 1.1 December 2020. I swapped to my current account when I pulled vortex vanquisher on it. Looking back, C2 is both more valuable and useful compared to vortex but the drip convinced me to change.
Youtube finally let me post images so here is my build with artifact details since i see comments asking for artifact details. I normally use crescent pike but vortex looks nicer for this picture 𒆙
Bruiser
Bruiser
idk how but he finally broke out of hoyo jail
9 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 21
View 5 replies
Bruiser
As a goodbye to the passing year, below are my ramblings of an archon whose birthday just passed, and whom I am deeply invested in
Recently with the arrival zhongli's birthday, there has been an uptick in zhongli content posted on bilibili, in particular zhongli guides and abyss clears. Unlike the traditional EN guides that focus on his support capabilities, CN players are very passionate about building and playing zhongli as a DPS and these guides delve deep into his DPS playstyle, in particular enabling him as on-field/hypercarry DPS.
As you all know, I personally play a lot of physical zhongli and especially engage in or at the very least, attempt abyss speedrunning with him so I am well-versed in zhongli's builds and teams surrounding his DPS playstyle. While these guides are not new to me, I still watch them to gleam any insight I can and determine if there is anything new to learn and apply. A recent but common conclusion from the guides and clears is that the hypercarry DPS playstyle, in particular phys zhongil/pikeli, has pretty much reached its limits and its future remains uncertain.
Unfortunately, I am inclined to agree having personally experienced this bottleneck myself. The current contemporary phys zhongli team relies on the core of furina, mika and yun jin to synergistically leverage zhongli's low NA scaling but fast atk speed in order to drive yun jin's flat dmg buffs. The issue arises from the advent of natlan where not only are bosses having higher HP but the abyss HP multiplier also increasing from 2.5x to 3x to compensate for the release of stronger DPS, supports and artifact sets that natlan offers.
The last major upgrade to this zhongli team, furina, came in 4.2, more than an entire year ago. However the bigger issue lies in yun jin being a buffer released in genshin version 2, that offers a buff while adequate during her release, is becoming increasingly insufficient as HP pools increase. Due to zhongli inherently having a low base atk for 5 star and low NA multipliers to balance his fast atk speed, yun jin and other sources of flat dmg buffs like crescent pike have always been preferred over bennet despite being an attack scaler. However, the overall damage of the team, despite being a highly synergistic team is becoming increasingly less relevant in the face of the inflated abyss HP pools.
The prevailing sentiment has been to compensate for this with vertical investment. In particular, furina's C2 is highly recommended. However, even this has its limits where investment beyond furina's C2 would have diminishing returns until her C6 that obsoletes the need for a healer. The current absolute best phys zhongli team runs C6 furina and replaces mika with C2/4 xilonen to not just buff furina's dmg but also zhongli's geo dmg and simultaneously functions as geo battery to alleviate yun jin's ER concerns. Yet this an extremely steep vertical investment requiring a minimum of 11 cost which will constitute having to sacrifice many characters for while still facing the criticism of being "carried by C6 furina" and brings into question the emphasis of zhongli's significance in the team.
While Zhongli's offensively flaws were sufficiently compensated for in the past with crescent pike and yun jin, they are becoming increasingly prominent and difficult to remedy without a new character, weapon, artifact or combination of the preceding. Regardless, I remain devoted to the character I started my journey in genshin with and remain hopeful that further support for this team, direct of indirect, will be released in natlan or even senzhnaya.
I would like to end this verbose reflection of mine by adapting an elegy from zhongli: I have no regrets in my pursuit to build and elevate zhongli beyond a support. Should the day ever come where this team truly falls off irredeemably in the abyss, my attempts, my efforts and my fruition will continue to shine like gold in my memories.
10 months ago | [YT] | 47
View 9 replies
Bruiser
Fun fact, I actually have an old account with C2 Zhongli that I pulled all the way back from his first release in version 1.1 December 2020. I swapped to my current account when I pulled vortex vanquisher on it. Looking back, C2 is both more valuable and useful compared to vortex but the drip convinced me to change.
10 months ago | [YT] | 30
View 13 replies
Bruiser
After spending all my primos...
This also came with 7 sucrose and 6 diona...
2 years ago | [YT] | 23
View 12 replies
Bruiser
When you skip the sidequests and go straight to the main quest
2 years ago | [YT] | 49
View 5 replies
Bruiser
Happy new year everyone 𒆙
2 years ago | [YT] | 54
View 4 replies
Bruiser
Youtube finally let me post images so here is my build with artifact details since i see comments asking for artifact details. I normally use crescent pike but vortex looks nicer for this picture 𒆙
3 years ago | [YT] | 381
View 60 replies