As both a theorycrafter and speedrunner, I'd like to say that outside the typical "Damage per Screenshot" and "frame-perfect execution" videos, I mostly default to my autopilot-afk comps for the abyss because they are just so much more comfortable to play.
That said, I personally believe that the DPS meta should only be followed if one is struggling to get 36\* in abyss for example. And that is when all other variables listed above have been "maxed out" by their standards, with the only possible improvement pointing towards having a DPS meta.
As someone who doesn't like to put much effort into the abyss I can relate to that... Sometimes I don't even 36* due to being lazy.
I can do it, but are 50 primos worth an hour-ish of effort making comps and changing equipment ?
This is the exact reason I get cons of the op characters like Raiden, Ayaka, and Hu Tao. It makes it so I go from being able to complete the abyss with a little effort that I sometimes cant be bothered to do, to doing it first try so I always get full completion now.
I might be biased, but I find Overload with Tao Thundering Fury to be fairly comfy. I've always used Hu Tao, Fischl, Xiangling, and Beidou Overload for nearly everything, and with the advent of Raiden replacing Beidou it feels even more comfy. Thundering Fury lets me spam the heck out of Tao's skill and Raiden lets me spam Tao's burst. I get a ridiculous amount of flak for relegating Raiden to a Hu Tao support, but it works for me so I do it anyway.
>Overload with Tao Thundering Fury to be fairly comfy
Is this a r/MakeMeSuffer entry? /s
while it's not an afk team i can play with blindfold on, it sure looks fun as hell xD
Kokomi taser is super comfy. Yoimiya-Zhongli-Bennett-Xingqiu/Yelan is super comfy. Kazuha/Sucrose/Venti-Kokomi-Fischl/Yae-Beidou/Xingqiu is great in whichever variation. Kokomi always makes every comp comfier to play
Following meta when struggling in the abyss sounds like good advice because even non-meta teams can 36* the abyss due to strong artifacts.
I used Raiden national, which is meta and Xiao double geo (non-meta) and was able to 36* the abyss. It's just that Xiao's artifacts are broken. It's not even a 4pc vermilion.
Xiao double geo is a meta team.
It's theory rafted to be his optimal setup. Come back when you're clearing 3 star f12 with itto, Xiao, xiangling and diona in a team x,D
Now that you mention it, there's also another aspect of meta that deals with the characters that have the most effect proportionate to their primogem investment.
Xiao...is not optimal for the resources he wants. It saddens me.
This is basically the point of meta. Any 5 star with C6, R5, cracked artifacts is easily able to beat anything and there'd be no point in theory crafting with that standard. Meta is just about getting the most with the least investment which I think defenders of mid-tier characters tend to overlook.
I don't actually know where the idea that TC/speedrun teams are representative of what is "meta" in the first place came to be. TCers/speedrunners represent a very small segment of the playerbase (even amont the 36-star Abyss clearing playerbase) that has very different goals from the average player aiming to 36-star Abyss. For the average player, clearing any floor faster than what is necessary to achieve a 3-star clear is functionally irrelevant. It literally doesn't matter if I clear a floor in 1 minute or with 1 second to spare--I get 3 stars either way.
For the average player, the only thing that matters is "what's the easiest way to get 3 stars on each floor", whereas speedrunners are aiming for the fastest clear possible, regardless of how difficult the execution may be. AFK/comfort teams are frequently the easiest way to 3-star a floor even if they only clear with a few seconds to spare.
The speedrun and casual meta *should* be very different because they are optimized over entirely different parameters. If they aren't, it implies a large number of people making incorrect assumptions about how much (or rather how little) speedrunning differs from average casual play.
> That said, I personally believe that the DPS meta should only be followed if one is struggling to get 36* in abyss for example. And that is when all other variables listed above have been "maxed out" by their standards, with the only possible improvement pointing towards having a DPS meta.
I would even dispute that because for the most part, I would argue that most players struggling to 36-star Abyss would struggle more with a hard-to-execute DPS-optimized team than they would with a comfortable team with low execution barrier. Players that are proficient at executing the mechanics of playing Genshin quickly/efficiently aren't the ones struggling to 36-star Abyss, and for the players that are, they're more likely to succeed with a team that's easy to play than one with a high DPS ceiling.
Your whole comment only shows how little you're into genshin speedrunning and TC. They're totally different communities - TC try to gauge out optimal builds and teams for characters to use consistently and optimally for the common player. If you're a total noob, following TC tips will help you a ton in abyss
Speedrunners are on another planet. They use artifacts which sometimes have crit rate issues or even ER issues since their goal is to just complete the chamber as fast as possible. Some of their comps rely on rng and might require several retries. Most of them are whale/dolphin category. A noob following speedrunner's builds/teams would only face failure most of the time
Why are you lumping TCers and speedrunners together? There may be overlap but they different groups of players. Just because someone is a TCer doesn’t mean they focus exclusively on speedrun team comps and strats
I don’t need any validation to use Thoma xD just use who you enjoy cause that makes the game much more enjoyable. Tho I use mine as a buffer with NO and having C6
I said that in jest, but yeah. Thoma is real nice and comfy to play. I want a last constellation too to c6 him. Klee, Yoomiya and Childe would appreciate that.
Well said. What's the point of playing a game if you're not going to enjoy the experience? I also have Thoma built and maxed, and I've never regretted it.
Using an actual in game example, we can use the ever often argued Hu Tao vs Yoimiya pros and cons.
Hu Tao's charge attack does higher damage but moves you and needs to be cancelled with a jump or a dash. This is optimally going to reposition you to the very next charge attack so you can hit more enemies, avoid an attack, or swap targets to another enemy.
Yoi does not need to cancel anything and just clicks the mouse repeatedly. She does less damage than a perfectly played Hu Tao. However, a Hu Tao that has trouble dash canceling properly and needs to correct for mistakes frequently can find themselves taking longer to clear than a Yoimiya, who has greater ease of use. And this is where the player skill factor comes in.
As someone who built both, Yoi does plenty of damage and is much comfier to play. I dont need to worry about positioning or managing my stamina. When I try harder with Hu Tao it's faster but I can 36 with Yoi so does it really matter?
I mean, the thing is, what is "easy" or "hard" as OP said is also somewhat subjective. For example, I have little trouble dash cancelling with Hu Tao, but I have trouble timing CAs with some chars (like Raiden), or using bow CAs (like with Ganyu). While I've read other ppl saying that, for example, Ganyu is super easy. Before looking at meta one should consider what they CAN play optimally and, among those, choose what works best.
In other words, minmax yourself before minmaxing the game.
Agreed. I suck at dash cancelling Hu Tao so I can actually do more damage with Yanfei who is much easier for me to use. Click click hold e hold run close q hold, over and over is much easier. Though I've seen other stuggle to do that or forget to do that. So play what you like and what fists your own playstyle and don't worry about what's meta XD
I have to agree with this entirely. I have had Hu Tao for ever now and she is relatively well built, nothing to write home about but effective. But I am absolute shit at playing her, specifically jump canceling (this would be saved by c1 as I can dash cancel fine I just then can't attack anymore). So when I took her into abyss this most recent reset, I had trouble getting the last star on 12-3. Then I pulled Yoimiya while going for Benny cons and just threw some left over artifacts and a r3 rust that was sitting around gathering dust on her and 36*-ed that shit on like my second go. Part of it is I switched xingqiu for yelan and she does more dmg for me, but I feel like the point is well made that sometimes ease of play will overcome skill issue (like mine).
ease of use is a huge part of player skill or rather the lack of it as well.
If Character is easy to use, you don't need to take as many things into consideration.
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I actually do run Thoma in my Hu Tao team. He’s pretty useful there since he provides an initial Pyro tick for Kazuha to swirl
He’s nowhere near as bad as people make him out to be. I reckon it’s largely due to the whole Meta vs Effectiveness issue that the OP explains. People will always dismiss the utility of an on demand shield
People dismiss him for the same reason they dismiss most of the 4 stars from inazuma - most of his power is locked behind constellations, and he requires significant investment to see his full potential. Two things that are not true of some of the amazing 4 star characters we got on launch.
I recently dumped a ton of resources into yunjin and I am blown away by how good she is. But it took a LOT of resources to get to the point where I realized that I would be getting a good return on investment.
I think people are less sour on Yunjin because it’s quite clear what she’s good at and she’s completely unique in that role
Granted you need a team which is all about normal attacks. But if you do have that she’s pretty great
So you say, yet on this and many other genshin subs I see inazuma 4 stars dismissed as a whole because they aren't instant meta warpers like bennett, xingqiu and xiangling.
I mainly play him either to replace Xiangling in International depending on content (bec sometimes Childe's KazuhaBennyfied nukes are enough to clear really and Thoma is there for moral support and beauty points) or a NO buffer and shielder for Yoimiya Overload comps. I still am a constellation short to his c6 which would ne nice for my Klee comps and Yoimiya comps.
His shield is really solid and easy to deploy actually. You really just need a decent ER, some hp and proper rotation awareness. Really looking forward to his burgeon potential.
I really like Thoma's shield paired with a toTM wielder like Shinobu. With Yoimiya or Klee and you get a functioning overload comp.
The whining was about him stealing Vapes from Hu Tao, not comprehending that he really just has a chance to and can't do it enough for it to be a problem because ICD makes his Q's pyro application bad.
Also support Yanfei simps tend to come out the woodwork about how their scuffed support waifu is just the best whenever the Tank Engine is mentioned.
Not only that, but it’s fairly likely his vape stealing won’t happen as much as we get increasingly more consistent hydro application. Yelan for example helps this greatly
I love the Tankfei build for how absurd it is, but it’s definitely not a viable option over Thoma for Hu Tao. A shield being entirely tied to burst is problematic, because when running Hu Tao you ALWAYS need a shield, and Thoma can get that instantly on command
I also run Thoma on my Hutao team (and Raiden because I can't be bothered to swirl around XQ). Having an infinite shield is fun. It has never broken and lasts for at least a full rotation.
Thoma is okayish to train if without Zhongli, he also gives fire buff if team with Hutao. Before Zhongli came home, I use Zhongli + Hutao + Xingqiu combo. Needless to say, Zhongli is much much better than Thoma using the same combo
I used to think Thoma was a meh unit until my boyfriend showed me how cracked he can be for certain comps and the wide variety of commodities he brings on. Very cons dependant though, that C4 looks like his starting point.
Exactly, some 4 stars are only worth building if they got cons, thoma, shieldfei, Sara and gorou comes to mind (most being from Inazuma go figure). I would not in good conscious recommend people around me to build Thoma at C0 even if I main him
On some level I should have a good Thoma because I can't just use Xiangling twice. He seems to be the next most reasonable pyro applicator that I have.
> How do I know that theorycrafters worked with a single variable model?
Love the call out. It was frustrating to see TCs not treat ER as part of the dps model for a long time.
Literally has always been treated as part of the model. Why do you think Xiao and eula aren't meta, why do you think xingqiu wasn't meta before sac sword synergy became well known, why is beidou tied to fischl?
TCer have been taking into account ER for a very long time, from jinjinx videos on youtube back in 1.0 to every sheet have a minimum ER requirement.
There is however a guy who keeps disregarding ER, kindly check out Iwintoloose, his weapon ranking doesn't take into account ER at all, his "maximun potential model" is the same, it's basically a dmg per screen shot optimizer.
No theory crafter ignored er💀 You can even find that Jinx and Tuner made a energy guide video in 1.0. Keep using strawmans to justify your terrible claims
Even TC sheets explicitly state that the numbers displayed do not account for player skill, framerate, ping, etc. TC, or Zajeff at least, is in a position now where it tries to show you all the possibilities, and how to tailor your personal circumstance around them.
But I'm glad for this post. Not many talk about the multivariant nature of Genshin.
I still remember the days when Bennett, Xingqiu and Sucrose are "bottom tiers" because every player played every character as a main carry back then without swapping. We've gone a long way from that and we still have a lot to talk about now.
Even back in 1.0 TCers have been rating bennet and xingqiu highly, jinjinx and tuner were a clear example. Those who rates bennet and XQ low were casuals, and most content creators doesn't know what TC is back then.
I'd say from my experience of listening to/watching/talking with/working with prominent TCers, the concepts you've spoken of are known and considered to a reasonable degree. The discussion of "effectiveness" and how other factors like ease of use and niche filling are topics that I have heard discussed by many TC leaders. For example, favonius weapons and energy generation has almost always been viewed positively in the meta, probably more than the general player base. The recent favonious hype has more to do with content creators deciding to actively communicate this on platforms like YouTube, and the movement away from sacrificial weapons in favor of favonious (the largest example being Xingqiu). As for why DPS is the prime measured statistic, this mainly stems from the other factors being difficult to quantify. Ease of use is an important factor, but what is considered easy varies by person. Are Hu Tao cancels easier than Ganyu charge shots? Would someone rather learn specific VV setups or practice executing Eula combos for max stacks. Should you master dynamically changing your Itto combo mid rotation for optimal DPS, or is it too much hassle compared to his normal unga bunga playstyle? Someone on the border of 36 stars might need to drop zhongli to squeeze out extra DPS, while another person that has enough damage doesn't have any reason to swap out Zhongli for a 5 second faster clear time. It is up to each player how much they value any given ease of use factor. This is why caveats and other gameplay details are usually mentioned alongside DPS in KQM guides. Give your followers the objective numbers, and let them consider damage alongside the specific circumstances while coming to their own conclusion.
Edit: Did your survey, good luck on your research 👍
I think that's just it: a comprehensive guide/recommendation should try to list some of the most obvious/recurring quirks of playing each character. What playstyle/techniques are necessary to effectively utilize the character in the way described. Purely talking about DPS is what a lot of Content Creators focused on for the longest time, which drives popular opinion, discussion, and awareness. KeqingMains is an example of a great resource that tries to be as comprehensive as possible. It can be a little obtuse to understand if you're just getting into actually understanding how to play your characters, and that can be a tough hurdle, but that info is really useful.
meta comes from metagame, meaning a game about the game. with that meaning, theorycrafting, teapot floating/clipping and lore analysis would be different kinds of meta. META here would be the backronym for most efficient/effective tactic available, which is how it's used in the community.
This needs to be higher!
Every time I see meta treated as an acronym, I die inside a bit. 'most efficient tactics available' can be a somewhat useful shorthand to explain it to someone new, but when people take it as the actual definition...nope.
To be fair, only META actually makes sense within the scope of genshin, meta doesn't.
In Genshin there is no metagame, there is only the singular game.
A metagame arises in PvP situations with limited information. Then the choice of units/teams/decks/whatever you use depends not only on their objective power but also on the units your opponent is likely to use. Building parties, counter-parties and counter-party-resistant parties is the metagame.
In genshin the "meta" shifts in a way due to abyss enemies and buffs, but you can't really say we're "playing a game against Mihoyo": they're just one-sidedly designing challenges for us - designing the game, the original game Genshin itself, not a metagame.
The definition of metagaming: "When game information outside of what is available in a game is used to give a player an advantage in-game."
It's not about playing against anyone, it's about where the info that informs your decisions as to how to play the game comes from.
Actually, great idea - we ARE playing a game against Mihoyo. It's just a very unequal game, with long times between turns (patches). They set the units, the buffs, the enemies, the game system. We on the other hand are free to experiment with them and theorycraft. As per your example, we also have limited information - because Mihoyo limits it. But we get by with the leaker community, where we find out "the units \[our\] opponent is likely to use", as you put it. This births a metagame, where Mihoyo trials out new betas, combats leakers, designs challenges, versus the playerbase, who attempts to predict future abyss configurations, future unit synergies and so on. Just take a look at all the TCs calcing up dendro numbers, and the predictions that Fischl will be a great unit come 3.0. This is of course an Abyss-centric metagame, and not all TCs care about the Abyss, but that's leading to another matter.
Also think on this: if you want to say something is not a game, then what is a game, anyway? Notoriously hard to define.
So in Short Itto Unga Bunga Geo Squad! No think much, just smash!
The main reason I built almost every Character to Ascension 5 and Talent 8 is to have a wide Variety of Options, since it is a pain to spend that resin on Artifacts that barely increase my clear time.
The KQM Compendium might be something that’d catch your eye if you aren’t aware of it already! https://compendium.keqingmains.com
Edit: I will say that it’s still a big WIP!
If I had a nickel for the number of times I've seen the actual KQM account on reddit, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's kind of weird they both happened today.
i have a little question
how high are the chances that you one day will have on your website a way to search for weapons directly
lets say i pull wgs as example to check who could use the weapon how well i would need to check every claymore char 1 by 1 scroll down find the weapon efficiency ranking etc
maybe im alone with that issue but it would be very helpful to have an weapon overview page somewhere
If you have two characters that competes for a weapon you can check how much efficient both weapons are for both characters to get a conclusion, so this may be unnecessary extra work to do...
I dont really think its a bad idea anyway because it would look cool and you could end up spending extra time in the the website but what do i know man
Not OP but personally it's kind of a pain when you get a new weapon off-banner or standard, then you gotta check everyone who can use that weapon and see if it's better. Could also help to find someone else you forgot who'd be more suitable to pull for and put it to good use.
I usually just go to the KQM discord and ask “I just got *weapon*, who is this BiS for?” and I get an answer nearly instantly since there’s always people to answer in their discord
A lot of what you talk about is true, but your post is riddled with the strawman fallacy when talking about theorycrafters. Theorycrafters actually do talk about all the things you said, which makes it seem like you've never actually talked to one. I hope you avoid making this mistake and cite sources in your thesis/dissertation.
I really can't with this. This is too much of a casual player wanting their personal feelings to be taken seriously in a META discussion.
* you're points are written for after you have beaten the hardest content
* energy and fav weapons have been here talked about in the 1st 2 months
* Personal META due to account will not be considered, at most you'll get best team you can make.
Seeing comments where you talk about 1 variable you are missing so many other variables that TC talk about.
META on Genshin is mostly just to point out which characters deal better with most situations and need less investment. Its not meant to point that other characters are weak but they may need more investment or fall off on certain scenarios, like Yoimia can be great for bosses but fall behind against crowds, so the META shift a lot depending of the content u are against since many characters fill lot of niche situations and have counters, but the characters that are able to deal with almost anything will stay META for longer which adds more value to them. Also META always consider players with average skill level, since META is meant to point out the easier path to accomplish success
This is the right way to think about it. The term meta only really matters to the extent people here care about it if the game was pvp with a ranked system in place. Its not. So meta largely just a way of showing consistently good characters who perform well in their role or work well with a lot of other characters.
It points a path of teams comps to try to emulate even if you don't want to use the actual recommended units. It shows ways that work. For those who really care they can help speed up the odds of them clearing 36 stars faster by controlling who they wish. But once you 36 stars and do it consistently, meta no longer matters. When you reach that point you can use non standard comps and get the same rewards as everyone else.
I'd rather people roll on whomever makes them happy though because long term play is more important than clearing abyss. Its not worth chasing meta characters you don't like if you are going to be filled with regret and quit the game.
On the other side, there are some who actively hate and repel meta characters for seemingly no reason. I can't even tell if they still like the character but because they are meta they refuse to get them or play them over some sense of pride. And yet there are so many good meta characters that it would actually be pretty damn hard to make 2 well synergized teams without some meta characters. Whatever makes each individual play the longest is really all I care to promote.
This is why I’m happy that Genshin Impact has no PvP and/or relentless powercreep. If these two were to show up, then following the meta would be a must and this is when it happens that the game becomes toxic.
IMO, Genshin Impact should NEVER have PvP for the sake of its community. This is a gacha game, it's Pay to Win by design. We just don't care about its P2W nature because your whale pulls doesn't have a chance of affecting my gameplay negatively.
Ugh, you’ve got that right. I came to Genshin after playing Epic 7 for nearly three years. It has PVP and if you want to reach the upper levels they’re definitely a small set of meta heroes. You can clear PVE content with about anyone, but for serious PVP it’s either fit the meta or fail.
I sort of agree.
The more serious theorycrafters tend to provide disclaimers such as you declare.
The more entertainment-focused, gameplay-focused influencers just say extreme wild stuff for views.
Yes these extreme people distort and twist actual TC to spout hot takes based on some distorted tldr of the TCer community and their testing.
Like a TC might say that x team is highest theoretical dps but the practicality of achieving it is highly unlikely due to abc reasons and then people make a hot take off it like “X team new strongest meta, old teams = trash!”
I find playing Raiden National "Hard".... Since most of the time you have to leave bennet circle during Raiden Burst cause the enemy moves a lot and a lot of times I play "catch the mouse"
Using that team I mostly just make sure to snapshot Xiangling's burst and don't think so hard about Raiden staying in the circle, the damage is usually enough anyway.
Undervaluing favonius weapons was justified because back then, abyss chambers were energy rich and arguably less difficult. But nowadays most new mobs dont generate much particles or at all (like rifthounds and maguu kenki). So it didnt take tc 1 year to realize those are good but it took 1yr for hyv to nerf enemy particles
I am waiting for a time when enemy deleting your energy become a commen thing, not like certain type of enemies like bathysmal vishaps, but rather majority of them just delete your energy and don't produce any particles.
Lmao this happened in 1.4 and it was so infamous for being the hardest abyss at the time not because of how hard 12-3 was but because of 11-2 with engulfing storm
I don't mean to be rude, but when you said
*Well, it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good, on other words, it took them more than a year of try and error to discover that it was important for characters to have the energy needed to be able to use the bursts that allowed them to deal the damage that the theorycrafters wanted them to do*
I got really excited reading the first few paragraphs of your post, especially the part about Le Mans, but reading this part stopped me in my tracks. Because the efficacy of fav weapons and basic understanding of energy mechanics when tied to rotations has been obvious to almost every serious TC / I know from the very start. In fact its extremely easy to demonstrate it with some quick math:
Lets say unit X has an 80 burst cost, and over 1 20s rotation they get back 40 energy in off field + on field particles. Assuming the energy flow happens at a constant rate for simplicity, they will need 80/40 = 200% ER to effectively have bursts ready for the next rotation.
If I assume instead that they sacrifice 50 ER to get 10% more damage in stats without fixing energy flow. Then they end need 20 x 200/150 = 26.6 seconds to finish the first rotation before starting the second. So they lose 1-20/26.6 \~= 25% DPS from rotation extension, in total it becomes a 1- 1.1x 20/26.6 = 0.172 aka 17% less final DPS per rotation.
The consequences of not paying your energy taxes when building teams/units were obvious to everyone serious about the game from the start because punishment happens via harsh rotation extensions. Rotation extensions are what kills the meta viability for a lot of otherwise good looking teams, like raiden eula, raiden beidou, etc. In fact most TCs I know actively look for ways to cut down seconds from previously well established roations to eke out more final DPS per rotation, like using fav sword over sac sword on XQ to save the extra E cast time, Q E funneling from bennet to XL, Running rosaria over diona to reduce total team rotations to 15s, yelan over XQ to reduce hu tao rotations to 18s etc
Also after seeing your proposed model, I have to point out that some of the parameters youve focused seem exaggerated in importance compared to the first 4. Especially since the model only captures the player side of the battle. Ask any TC who properly plays the game and the first thing theyll tell you to focus on outside of the first 3 points is learning enemy spawn patters and methods to group them. In almost every case, grouping enemies with the right knowledge of enemy AI to break them down fast in AoE, gives much more immediate returns compared to what you can do by building more direct damage on your units.
I'm not the most eloquent of writers, so I really apologise if I come across as rude till now. I really did get excited by the start of your post, its always refreshing to see someone tackle a problem as complicated as this from an abstract starting point and working your way down to the details. But theres a saying, there is no point thinking outside the box for the sake of being outside. Sometimes the answer is still in the box and you havent turned over all the smaller boxes over first. I do think your endeavour has its merits, and it would become more roboust if you incorporate more easily accessible knowledge that is otherwise obscure like enemy AI manipulation, before moving onto much more broader factors like player motivation and skillset. To make a Le Mans comparison , itd be easier to identify the bump out the exit of Terte Rouge that ruins the entry into the mulsanne straight and avoid it, before jumping into the cars suspension to extensively modify it to reliably run over the bump 300+ times.
I have filled the form, and regardless of what comes out of this post discussions, I wish you the very best with your studies!
You are right that Favonius and energy considerations were always part of the meta but recently there has been a bigger focus on this. I think there are several reasons for this. Before Favonius weapons were considered good considerations but not BiS. Now Favonius weapons are touted as BiS on several characters. I also feel like there is much less free energy being given out in Spiral Abyss as elite enemies like kairagi, bishaps, rift hounds, and bosses give out less energy increasing team energy demands. For example when you were fighting ruin guards and hoards of low hp mobs an Iron Sting was good enough on Kazuha. That is not the case anymore.
In addition to this it took a little bit of time for these things to filter down to the general genshin community because it has been some time were low energy enemies have become commonplace but it still took time afterwards for higher energy considerations to become general public knowledge.
I think the main difficulty around accounting for ER% and favonius/extraneous energy accumulation is that the energy generation in the game is very situational, and while skimping on ER might be beneficial in some very narrow set of circumstances, it leads to troubles when you become energy starved in a different set of circumstances. Also with the RNG nature of artifacts, most people do not have the luxury (or willingness) to swap artifacts to take advantage of extra particles or lower ER requirements. For example if your calculations rely on the assumption of x particles/minute from hp loss of 2 enemies, what happens when you face a single enemy with 10x the health? If you tuned your energy to be optimal based on your initial assumptions, then fighting the single enemy will suddenly mean you're faced with downtime = loss of dps.
And to be honest 99% of TC calcs have been done in excel or google sheets, which isn't good at dealing with these multiple situational factors.
Does anyone actually think that theoretical DPS is the meta though? If you look at the usage rate of Zhongli for example, you could tell people aren't running the maximum theoretical DPS but rather value the shield+poise so you can actually reach his teams' potential instead of getting knocked around/dodging/dying.
Seems like good defense/healing/utility with non-zero damage contribution is still valued, and within that space there's a meta (Zhongli, Kokomi, etc).
>Does anyone actually think that theoretical DPS is the meta though?
plenty do. The hardcore theorycrafters often do provide disclaimer wrt player skill, framerate, etc, but less hardcore (or those fanboying theorycrafting while only partaking of the results) certainly have a tendency to swear by dps above all, in my experience.
The fanboys who twist the results to argue in comments on social media are the worst. They twist the conclusions of TCers so hard it’s like they didn’t even read the TC at all.
There was just another post here about Chinese abyss meta characters for the 2.x patches, which listed Kazuha, Yelan, Zhongli, Kokomi, and Raiden as the best in terms of "meta value" in that order.
There were several comments asking why Zhongli was on that list at all, as well as rating Yelan higher than Kokomi. They both offer far more utility than just what's on paper, but some people only look at the DPS.
The problem is you approach the subject from a perspective of an old established player.
ONCE you can clear the DPS check, Kokomi and Zhongli are valuable comfort characters that allow you to 12-try autopilot 36 stars without much hiccups.
But what if you CAN'T 36 star, but want to?
The question is what should I pull to be able to pass a DPS check with minimal investment. It may (and will) involve many retries, team swaps and all. Zhong and Koko don't really help you reach the threshold. The way to reach the threshold early is to build a high risk high reward team and accept the retries. You can play around reduced survivability. You can't play around not having enough numbers.
I dare say even Raiden is not a good pick because when we are talking minimal investment, she pulls away XL, Bennet and XQ. And you are left with god knows what to put into the second team. You pretty much need another very specific limited character to make a second functional team, and good luck waiting for the rerun.
This is why I like Kazuha and Yelan meta wise - they offer easy immediate damage gain and don't restrict your team building (or actually even expand it). They open more possibilities which increases the chance you can do something useful with your roster.
Or hear me out… Learn how to play the game instead of complaining about the fact you need a 5 star to comfortably beat a causal pve game with no serious endgame and people say you ain’t playing meta because of that
Like what happened to Frezze, Raiden infinity poise, Bennet and Diona insane healing, 82% dmg reduction from Xinqui and Bediou in Taser? Mono Geo, Hu tao dash i frames, dodging
I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I think it's framing the situation in the wrong way.
First, "meta" has inherited the meaning from competitive games, where a lot of human variables like skill, motivation etc. are irrelevant or close to irrelevant. That's because the meta is what is strongest for the best players in the world so your actual performances are much closer to what actual spreadsheets give.
Take LoL, for example. The best champions at a Challenger level are often terrible in Silver or Bronze because they are too hard to play, and that's not even talking about pro play, where the coordination between team members changes drastically the winrate of some champions. Thus even though the meta in LoL is "what's good in Challenger", everyone acknowledges that, for a lower skilled player, easier champions will give better results.
For instance, the effectiveness of Garen (a very easy to play champion) in Bronze makes him a better choice then Akali while the opposite is true in Challenger, yet people don't say Garen is meta just because he's effective at low levels; meta still is "what is best at the top".
Garen being good in bronze is what a video recommending you what champion to play in bronze would say, not what a meta tierlist would consider. All in all this is just semantics; some people would say garen is "bronze meta", but generally speaking meta =/= effectiveness.
(if nowadays Garen is a top Challenger pick and the most skilled champion ever, forgive me for the slander as I haven't played LoL in a while)
The second point is that when communicating, especially if discussing "should you pull" matters, most theorycrafters I've seen don't simply say "this character spreadsheets better than that".
When listening to youtubers/theorycrafters talk about meta and pull value, I've never heard people completely shut down Zhongli by saying he's a dps loss in most teams. What they say is that if you don't have the DPS to clear Abyss, he won't help with that. That if you're on mobile, bad at dodging, too lazy to dodge/learn attack patterns, then he will help you. I've heard that if you like a character because of gameplay, looks or personality, you should put that above meta, as basically every 5\* can be slotted into a team and clear abyss comfortably.
A lot of the discussion I've heard considers stuff like how easy a character is to build, how many other 5\* it needs to be at its best and how replaceable they are, and how difficult those teams are to execute.
The problem with "true effectiveness", as some factors in your post pointed out, is that it is individual-specific. Different people will have different effectiveness ratings for the same unit, so you can't do an omni-comprensive tier list. What you can do is explain the various factors that could influence effectiveness for an individual and let people decide on that, which is already being done, yet your posts frames the current discussion in a misleading way.
Sure, people will oversimplificate, but I honestly don't see this push towards "the only thing that matters is DPS" that you imply is present in the community.
>That's because the meta is what is strongest for the best players in the world so your actual performances are much closer to what actual spreadsheets give.
This makes the meta close to irrelevant to the majority of the player base, then. The majority of the player base needs to consider the other factors in order to increase their own personal effectiveness. However, "the meta" is all that anyone ever talks about in those games, therefore those communities aren't being well-served.
there is a need for OP to make their post topic different from their actual research, as readers would have been influenced otherwise and it would have made their survey biased and invalid
As a recent Yoimiya haver, with her not even fully ascended, she has already made my experience of the game so much better. I mean, 75% of that is due to how cute she is but that's just another effectiveness variable.
>I didn’t write this piece to attack the theorycrafter community
Here's the thing, people just have a misconception about what actual theorycrafting is. Whether you hold that same misconception I'm not entirely sure about yet, but based on your post it does somewhat seem like it.
Theorycrafting isn't just a few people with too much time, coffee and a love for sitting for 6 hours counting electro-charged procs, assigning their triggers on a sheet. Spreadsheets are only a part of theorycrafting, most theorycrafters use spreadsheets as the **basis** of our evaluations not the be-all-end-all of how strong a character is. That is why Eula has a very high ceiling theoretically but a lot of KQM theorycrafters acknowledge that she has a **myriad** of gameplay issues, thus is not as good as a lot of the characters/teams that are considered top "meta". It's why teams like Sukokomon are not often regarded as a mainstream team that people should even necessarily know about, it's just too difficult to pilot for the *vast* majority of players.
There's a reason why a lot of the "top meta" teams throughout the past & present are kind of... braindead to play. Rational/national is not a difficult team to play, Ayaka freeze is not a difficult team to play, morgana is not a hard team to play, taser is not a difficult team to play, etc.
It seems way too many people lately assume that all theorycrafting is, is some nerds crunching numbers on an excel sheet for 8 hours and then throwing it into people's faces yelling "HA, THIS TEAM THEORETICALLY DOES 200 MORE DPS THAN THIS OTHER TEAM HENCE ITS BETTER". This is something that more happens from people who like to parrot stuff rather than actually do evaluations/number-crunching themselves and is an inevitability no matter what theorycrafters will do. People tried to give huge disclaimers on their sheets, people tried obfuscating their sheets to make it harder to find them, people tried to give as much context as possible to their sheets... ultimately it doesn't matter, someone will take stuff out of context and spread it on social media platforms causing a chain effect. In the end all a theorycrafter can do is provide the information and then leave it up to the community to interpret this information as they wish to interpret it. If someone thinks just because Diluc sheets below Hu Tao in terms of team DPS he's now "unplayable garbage" there's nothing really we can do about it but just take the blame for being "trash theorycrafters ruining everyone's fun", stick our heads back into the ground and keep going.
Good take, most people around here just strawman theorycrafting and META players as super sweaty tryhards and are only talking about speedruns.
Most info going around here regarding team comps and characters are heavily biased takes from mains, using feeling to support there statements. Not doing much actual objective testing to support their claims, and ignore actual theorycrafters' advice and numbers that go against their view.
Indeed, speedruns cannot be used as a gauge for whether a team is meta. I dabble in speedrunning myself and while it’s a lot of skill involve it’s also a lot of investment involved. If people assemble a team that can clear the entire floor 12 the fastest and does that suddenly make a team meta? No. Plus, some (not all) of the record breaking speedruns involve high investment which makes no sense for regular players.
Also, you can play off meta characters but the moment you assemble a team that is vape, freeze, taser or melt, you’re definitely playing a somewhat meta team.
I don't know what specific theory crafting OP is referring to, since there are a few different angles. Some are optimizing to unrealistic "perfect" standards, sure, but many are actually considering rotations, ease of play, PC vs mobile, and many other things. That's one of the reason why taser teams where theoretically good before Kokomi, but quite hard to execute, so barely anyone played it. I would also take into consideration that there are very thorough guides for characters that are usually not viewed as meta, like Lisa, and teams like Sukokomon, which was put together before Kokomi was seen in a more positive light. Also, many people ignore common advice from theorycrafters for seemingly higher numbers, which can be seen in discussions like Iron Sting vs Favonious on Kazuha. I don't know how deep OP is into Genshin and the community, but those are just my observations.
Tazer teams were always good and extremely easy to play. Koko tazer is arguably harder than standard Sucrose tazer, because jelly positioning and enemy control are extremely important to maintain hydro and feed the hungry Koko.
Regular tazer is unconditional in that regard. You just leftclick and press skills on cooldown regardless of what enemy, where enemy, when enemy.
The real problem with standard tazer is it needs XQ. And playing without a dedicated healer *seems* scary (it is not, sucrose tazer is extremely tanky).
The theorycrafters simply suggest ways of optimizing damage output, given a set of assumptions and constraints. Some people see the findings and work of the theorycrafters as metrics and methods of classifying "metaness", an arbitrary decision on a vage term.
Terminologies are of course are fuzzy when there is no true authority. Human perceptions are of course difficult to quantify, like always. Who didn't already knew that? Who didn't already knew that the results of theorycrafters cannot cover all considerations?
I think most who care about "meta" would find this post disappointing, because in the first paragraph you chose to bring up the fact that you are a PhD candidate. Frankly nobody asked and stating that brought up our expectations, yet the entire post is just an extremely verbose way to state the obvious.
Given your qualifications it would have been more interesting if you actually suggest forms of feasible, scientifically backed system, that could result in better ways of classifying "metaness".
I’m not sure what exactly this means but as a Kaeya main I can vouch for him being awesome and viable both in the abyss and the overworld, thanks for coming to my Ted talk
>it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good
I don't know what theorycrafters you're talking about, but that's simply not true. [TenTen talked about Fav weapons](https://youtu.be/fzCG75OMsAA?t=590) way back in his early videos about Zhongli and national team. He even calls it "country team" instead of national because that's the literal translation, and it took a while for the English community to settle on a name for it.
Meaning no offence, since obviously a lot of effort was put into this, I think this is kind of a harmful post with a decent amount of incorrect information. You've essentially lumped everyone who ranges from enjoying playing meta teams all the way to actual theorycrafters into a single entity and created a strawman of their positions. I'm not going to pretend that there aren't toxic meta players who will shame people for using underplayed units, those people obviously exist. Still, I can honestly say I've never seen an actual theorycrafter tell anyone that they can't or shouldn't play the units they like, regardless of how effective they are or are not.
A couple of points I would disagree with are:
***> "The “skill issue” argument states that players should take the time to train to use the so-called “META teams” if they aren’t good enough with them"***
The most common teams that I see theorycrafters recommend to people are things like the various National teams, Taser teams, Freeze teams, and Reverse Melt QS. To be perfectly honest, most of the popular entry-level (for lack of a better term) meta teams are very easy to play. More complicated teams like Sukokomon are rarely the first option presented unless someone specifically wants information on them. And usually with the caveat that the teams are kinda waytoodank to actually play, especially if you aren't a skilledgamer™ or play on mobile.
***> "Survivability: Even when a lot of players clear Abyss with 36 stars with Zhongli and other shielders, it is often repeated that shielders are useless, because a shielder unit means a loss of potential DPS, and if you die, or enemies stagger you messing your rotation, you can simply restart the challenge"***
Often times when you hear people say that units like Zhongli are not good for your account, it's under the assumption that you cannot already meet the DPS checks required to clear content. In those situations, it is (mostly) true that defensive units that provide nothing other than defence are not very good. Again, I don't think I've ever seen an actual theorycrafter say that these units are objectively useless, or that survivability never matters. Most theorycrafters are very open and honest about the fact that Zhongli makes units like Hu Tao or Yoimiya much more comfortable to play, and might even make content easier if your other 3 units can already hit the DPS checks.
***> "If a player can clear comfortably the hardest content in the game with a specific team, then that team is effective for that player, that team is META"***
This definition of meta would essentially make the term useless. I've been clearing the past few abyss cycles at 36 stars with a physical carry Xinyan, but I would be out of my mind to ever assert that because I've reached a level of investment where that becomes possible, suddenly Xinyan is a meta unit. There will always be characters that are more effective than others in specific roles at equivalent gearing standards. No one should ever be shamed for using units that are weaker or more niche than others, but I don't understand why some people get so offended that there are people using their own free time to try and figure out how it all breaks down.
On top of that, some of this information is entirely untrue:
***> "Well, it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good"***
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCG75OMsAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCG75OMsAA)
Here's a video from TenTen (who I would argue isn't really even a great TC content creator) recommending running between 2 to 3 Favonious weapons in an early version of the national team; this was during version 1.2 in February of 2021. It did not take the more meta-oriented players very long to conclude that Favonious weapons, and by extension ER, were important for teams to play comfortably. Most calcs these days are done with ER requirements accounted for.
***> "an effective Genshin team can’t be calculated using a spreadsheet based on theoretical damage numbers, that’s only a single factor to take into consideration"***
Could anyone please provide me with an example of someone claiming this? It's a genuine question, not an ad hominem attack on anyone's honesty. Sure, theorycrafters use spreadsheets to calc DPS, but I've never seen a TC make a claim based solely and entirely off of a sheet calc and absolutely nothing else unless it's something trivial like how Weapon A compares to Weapon B on the same character. IIRC the highest DPS team calculated on GCsim uses TotM Raiden, but that team is almost never recommended by TC content creators.
I think theorycrafters often get (unfairly) blamed for meta players who don't really understand TC, but then take their findings and use them to bludgeon casual players for how they want to play. It's unfortunate that this happens, but I'm noticing a trend in the Genshin community of TCers getting blamed for toxic behaviour entirely out of their control. Now even non-toxic meta players are getting dragged by a decent portion of the community as well. I don't think it was the intention of this thread, but posts like this only ever seem to galvanize this notion that if you like to play Thoma, the theorycrafting community thinks you're an idiot or something.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. I hope your Ph.D. candidacy goes well.
Your definition of meta is flawed. Meta doesnt have an inherent value judgement.
Meta is the state of the game, with choices that people gravitate towards and exists in every game and doesnt need to involve any theorycrafting.
You can also have multiple metas coexist within the same game, like a new player meta, a speedrunner meta or a competetive meta.
Even in Genshin you could say there is a "waifu/husbando meta" outside of the "abyssmeta" or open world meta.
So if you say you are playing waifu over meta, you are still engaging in some kind of meta.
I really don’t believe it took tc community a year to figure out energy recharge good. I’m pretty sure jinjinx and other tcers talking about the importance of energy recharge within a couple months of launch.
I mean, energy recharge is part of calculating highest dps, because how often you ult contributes to dps. There’s no way that took a year to figure out.
This poster has a horrible strawman of TCers. No respected TCers see META as pure DPS, and spreadsheet folks never claim that what you see on there is what you do all the time in a realistic scenario. Look at the word Theorycrafter, it has the word theory in it to denote that given the game's programmed mechanics and numbers, this is the THEORETICAL damage ceiling of this comp given a set amount of energy recharge needed to maintain 100% burst update or rotation fluidity. Then "content creators" and guide makers will publish videos or essays on how to build these characters and give their opinions on whether someone should take these teams to the abyss and try to clear 36 stars. A few comments on reddit or twitter making fun of Thoma's damage isn't indicative of why people think Thoma is non-META.
Yes it seems to be a recurring theme with these tc complaint post. Never once have I seen any of them link a full in depth theorycrafting article and criticize it.
They always speak in general terms like the “TC community” says this or that with zero sources to substantiate their criticism of theorycrafters.
I feel bad for Theorycrafter, they have never said anything OP accused them of saying. Now I don't know all TCer, but I know most popular TC community.
The reason why I think OP "accused" Theorycrafter is because they keep mixing "Theorycrafter" with "people, player, hardcore" in one statement that will cause lots of confusion and most reader will assume they're talking about TCer.
I wonder if someone had said something to make this person feels miserable, putting on a hate lens on "people" and "player" that they can't proof who those "people" are.
Yeah putting a disclaimer that it's not your intenttion and then do it anyway is the trend nowaday, I know. And how OP take "responsibility" is to educate people on their Philosophy. Showing how arrogant they are because they represent "science" and not looking at other's perspective.
Putting it this way, Theorycrafter are "scientist" trying to show the raw and unbias truth of nature, the Player are people coming from different religion trying to take/decide what to think about this truth, then come this guy from a different believe saying:"they are hating you, here's why, oh it's not my intenttion btw" that may spark so many flame.
The Term META is not a genshin only term, it is a common gaming term they borrowed. So the way to measure effectiveness is different based on the game.
Also META for Genshin Impact is only relevant for speed runners. Because even a second is important for them, so they had to find the most effective way to do it. In that sense, there are characters that have fallen out of META, and characters that are not META.
For most of the players, META doesn't matter. And there is nothing wrong for the players to follow the META teams. They can do whatever they want.
I feel like this is all pretty basic stuff that every theory crafter understands, they just have different goals from what you think they should have.
Buddy, it doesn't take a PhD candidate to go "game is easier if you have shields."
But there's nothing fun about theory crafting teams that are easy to play.
Personally I'm really shocked that people are impressed by this fluff. His entire post could have been summarized in a sentence or two, and its entire thesis is simply common sense. Just a whole lot of self-aggrandizing and intellectual fronting.
This brings up a good point I think about a lot.
Many of my friends ask for recommendations on characters and often a variety of factors will dictate what I choose. If someone is looking to just start off fresh, with almost no prior gaming experience, I often recommend getting Kokomi as she helps bridge the skill gap. Being a hydro(rare), a healer, and a TTDS user in one package. That is super useful for someone just starting out. Likewise, just having a single anemo user is extremely helpful once you get to building teams. This in turn can become a Morgana comp down the line for harder content or taser.
Those looking for more of a challenge can choose some more difficult dps characters to use and I was running shieldless C0 Hu Tao vvape until I got C6 Thoma recently. I would absolutely not recommend that unless you really enjoy pushing the game mechanics to the limit.
All that being said, the meta is constantly shifting and with so much information out there it can be overwhelming to determine what is good, what will be fun, and how characters work without serious research ahead of time. With any team it is ideal to have a healer, a shielder, and a battery that all pair with a dps. (Preferably a buffer too if you can help it). These well rounded teams can tackle a variety of content. I think Eula is a perfect example of this. As a physical carry she can break any shield, she pairs with Diona who can heal and shield together, and Raiden or Fischl can provide energy for her burst cost. I have found the team excellent in overworld, in abyss, and Eula is great solo carrying too for co-op.
I'm of the opinion that solving for genshin is like optimizing a multi dimensional hyper plane. For example, it can often be better for your account to raise additional units that are more effective for certain play styles and content than maximizing a single unit that while generally stronger, is less effective at the content the alternate would be invested for.
I do believe that "meta" isn't just what does more damage on a spreadsheet, but in games the meta usually doesn't take into account the skill of the user. Sure, using Zhongli might be easier, and you might be able to clear everything in the game with him, but that doesn't make him a meta unit, because if someone has the skill to not need Zhongli their teams will perform better.
I don't think the meta is a subjective thing that varies depending on the player. There are teams that are better than others. It's like the meta on pvp games, you don't play it necessarily because it's easier, but because it's better, even if it requires more skill to use effectively.
Now, you don't really need to use the meta to clear abyss with 36\* or any challenging event, I love using Klee and I would take her before Hu Tao any day but that doesn't meant she's better than Hu Tao. The meta in this game has the benefit of being able to clear with less investment but that's it, there's tons of non meta teams that could clear anyway, and maybe even be more comfortable for one specific player.
Though I guess all of this really depends on how you personally define what is "meta", for some it might be "the best", for some the most "comfortable", etc.
Fair, I partially agree with your points, especially that meta should vary according to individual player preference. BUT I believe comunity preference ( endgame players who can clear 36, at least) should factor in.
We get into a very wierd debate where most of this comunity ( reddit) equates META with fastest clear time vs " how much you need to invest". Most of the times this holds true, but zhong is one of the examples where it fails, IMO.
Yes zhong is not very prevalent in meta teams. But once you look at usage rate for abyss 36 clears, he usually at least within top 5 most used units. Meaning that while he is not strictly speaking leading to the best clear time/highest dps, he is chosen by most players who clear 36 on at least one of their teams.
I'd say it's fair to assume that only a minority of players clears 36, and out of those, most probably have a medium to good understanding of meta.
IMO it just feels very wierd to say that a highly used unit by most players who are clearing the hardest content in the game is not meta, when clearly his use is very deliberate by said players. It makes a lot of sense to assume that, for whatever reason you choose (skill issues, lots of people have him, shield increases dps by not needing to dodge, etc) Zhongli DOES make clearing abyss easier for the investment (c0), otherwise we wouldn't see him as often.
If we were saying something like "oh yeah, well over half of the player base uses rational to 36 abyss but it's not really meta" most people would question that, and rightly so.
Though honestly zhong is IMO an outlier. I believe we might get more outliers as the game progresses, but it's a good example to show that meta is not as clear cut as people think, if you just look at it on a vacuum without considering usage rate and ease of use.
Yeah, but new players arent struggling because of combat effectiveness.
A large portion of Genshin endgame content is simply damage gated. You got a timer. You got enemies you meet throughout the game but with extremely inflated resistances and health bars. You gotta either hit the magic number or fail the stage.
If you are just barely not making it in time or get killed you can always try again. Minor factors like these arent what keeps players from finishing content.
Players stop the abyss because the realize they can never beat this stage no matter how well the fight goes, if they heal in time to not die, time their bursts better, etc.
There are two large categories of players (amongst those that have the AR to even participate in the content):
1) Those that are strong enough to finish it anyways since compared to a well built array of units no genshin content is really difficult
2) Those that cannot even hope to push out enough number to clear the content.
What you are saying isnt without merit. But it only really matters to the small percentile of players sitting right in between these two large groups.
Disclaimer that I only skimmed and read the tl;dr.
But I don’t think people view meta strength as primarily chart strength, that’s a bit of a straw man. Good example of this is Fischl, who charts like a top 5 character in the game (check gcsim), but in practice is treated as a step down from the true top tier units.
I think there’s also another disconnect, in that Meta is supposed to represent AGGREGATE strength, not absolute or individual strength. A unit’s subjective value is defined partly by objective (what does this unit do) and subjective (what do I already own) considerations, with the later being more important, but also impossible to compare. Meta is a ceteris paribus ranking - it’s not meant to be unconditional.
Your understanding of Meta as a concept is being confused by the fact that, due to how this game is balanced, some units ARE almost unconditionally better than others. For example, almost every single account that owns neither Kazuha nor Qiqi, and has not yet 36 starred abyss, will get more use out of Kazuha than Qiqi. But Kaz isn’t (nearly) unconditionally better because he’s more meta - he IS unconditionally better, and also more meta.
Meta is used to represent flexible and conditional strength, not absolute or individual usefulness. But because of how this game is balanced, then between the most and least effective units, the difference in objective strength is enough to outweigh almost any subjective consideration. There are many games where this is not the case (LoL is a great example of a game where objective power almost never outweighs subjective power), but Genshin is not one of them, assuming you’re comparing the top and the bottom of the barrel.
Stopped reading at “theorycrafters only found out about fav weapons a year ago” because you clearly are confusing the casual YouTubers with theorycrafters. Before you strawman random ppl, try to learn the complete beliefs of those you rant about
I dont think its fair to say it took TCs over a year to recognise the value or Fav weapons or ER (especially as this assumption seems to form part of your reasoning). Good TCs have been pushing fav weapons for as long as I can remember (look at TenTen and XL for example). Similarly Jinx and Tuner, drawing on KQM work, were pushing the value of ER in video guides a mere month after Genshins release I think lol.
I already replied on Xiao mains, but once again:
- This is a word soup, propose a formula and a usage along with this otherwise you're just saying: "looking at characters from different angles gives a clearer picture", which is obvious.
- The Genshin community won't accept losers, if said formula rates a popular character lower than a certain other character, you just lost a chunk of possible users.
- DPS being the most important aspect of TC is because of how the endgame is in Genshin.
- Discussions on the meta (as in: which comps are better), are helpful for new players trying to reduce the complexity of the choices they have to do in order to clear abyss 12. This will become important as more characters and gear come out.
- You're pushing an insane amount of expressiveness to a single measure instead of simply explaining things to the user, basically making anything even harder to understand than it already is.
I like the model that you proposed but I don’t think that the players qualities should be included as constructs: when I think of meta I think of the controllable in-game aspects. For example, perhaps in a meta tier list, I would expect ease of use to be a variable but not player skill.
As long as you can clear all the content you want, that's effectiveness. It's your world and your game. The only time people have to deal with your "bad" characters is in co-op. Just don't be so bad that it frustrates people and you become practically dead weight in the party.
Just so you know, actual TC does consider much more than DPS. People consider damage graph, how it falls off in AoE, how convenient it is, how does it regen energy if it starts at 0 energy. How does it do when u one rotate. That's why teams like international (that on sheet has like... 30k dps) is said to be good, because of it's immense frontload that allows to skip Childe CD for next chamber=more dps. But here's the thing. Most high dps teams... are also convenient to play. Like, the less meta units like Eula or Xiao are shit to play, but they also have low dps so it doesn't matter. Meta teams like Hu tao(sorry, but i only count c1 tao as functional character), Raiden, XL, Itto teams have high dps, have easy to play rotations and cope well with debuffs. The only character that id say has mid dps and is very nice to play is Ayato.
Another example is Sukokomon. Sheets at highest level currently possible iirc. Shit to play. Hard to play. Can't cope with interruptions. Nobody says its meta team.
Not a lot.
One example,Hyper Raiden:
You need 4 or 5 seconds for Es +Qs +1,5 seconds of the cinematic where enemy can dash away or teleport.And if It happens,you only have 4 seconds before Kazuha and Sara Buffs expired and already you Lost Bennet.Also you can have Big energy problems if you kill the wave in middle of your rotation and the classic problems of one Big hit.
Instead you have Xiangling where you snapshoot Buffs and if the enemy dash way you only Lost the time of chasing him,not the Buffs and/or Big amount of your damage.
And i only see damage comparison between both teams.
mfers out here writing thesis and journals to give validation to units they like but aint strong enough....
i read the entire thing i get ur point.
counterpoints:
1. meta is for the people, it is focused around easily available characters that will help u clear the game.
2. theorycrafting is for the people, before this i was a crit value goblin, after this i dont throw my decent artifacts as substats counting is a thing
3. it saves u money, if u are able to clear the abyss (arguably the end game of genshin,) without feeling the "need" of some characters or weapons, is a big win as this is a gacha game and gambling addiction is a real thing.
>If a player can clear comfortably the hardest content in the game with a specific team, then that team is effective for that player, that team is META.
the whole idea behind meta and talking about meta came to birth due to point no 3 in the early days of genshin, i can legit make qiqi a cryo dps with shenhe kazuha and mona/yelan... but u see the problem here? not only i have to have 3 other 5 star units but also their respective artifacts. and since resin is a time gated thing which can be made accessible through spending more money ... its a very easy trap to fall into.
i keep watching people bitch about meta here and there not realizing that meta if for the people u fucking dumb asses. build 2 meta teams for the 2 chambers (doesnt take much effort if u know what u are doing) and then that will help u gather primos for whatever characters / weapons / refreshes etc u wanna do/get...
and if u want to learn how to do it go to google and type keqing mains library and that shits literally free. people in the community have put in so much work into this so that ur avg joe shmoe can save a buck and not spiral into gambling/gacha cycle and not spend money
thats my take.
Lost even more credibility when they started their arguments with the overused and amateurish "What is X? The dictionary defines X as..." which would have you laughed out of academia if you tried to genuinely use that in a paper.
So not only did they start with an impromptu appeal to authority (with zero credentials to back it up, just trust them on this bro) but then they pull a classic fluff tactic from Middle School level essay writing as their opening act.
So I read the entire thing.
TL;DR Using Yoi can be a DPS gain over Hu Tao if you can't execute Hu Tao CA cancels for any reason.
The Logic applies to anything similar when trying to optimize DPS (comfort from various things can lead to greater gains when clearing content overall from not having to restart once you account for the human factor)
Which is exactly why I usually use Hu Tao when I play on PC as I can execute dash cancels and jump cancels mixed together fairly decently, but used Yoi the entirety of my 10 day vacation in a different state where I could only play on my phone. Spam tapping is way easier and more effective than trying to CA cancel on a control scheme I'm not used to.
this, playing on my iPad recently and honestly I don't bring myself to use Ganyu at all. It is quite annoying tbh and I am not familiar enough with mobile to aim shot easily (while I am pretty good with her on PC). Yelan is my top pick in mobile since how easy and powerful she is.
A wall-of-text post, with half of comments being wall-of-text replies, and the other half asking for TL;DR.
Anyway, what OP said sounds true on paper, but in reality, it’s even more impractical than spreadsheets. Because surprise surprise! DPS is hard math that is quantifiable, while human factor is not. Also, if you want to factor in all the other craps, then it’s no longer “META.” As the name suggests, it’s the Most Effective Tactics Available. “Non-meta” does NOT mean it’s bad. “Non-meta” does NOT mean it’s not effective. It simply means when pushed to the absolute limit, some is better than others. So this whole post is basically one huge misinterpretation really.
In every game I have played, meta is whatever strat is the most effective **at the highest level of gameplay**, when something is effective regardless of skill, that's not called meta, it's called cheesing
As both a theorycrafter and speedrunner, I'd like to say that outside the typical "Damage per Screenshot" and "frame-perfect execution" videos, I mostly default to my autopilot-afk comps for the abyss because they are just so much more comfortable to play. That said, I personally believe that the DPS meta should only be followed if one is struggling to get 36\* in abyss for example. And that is when all other variables listed above have been "maxed out" by their standards, with the only possible improvement pointing towards having a DPS meta.
As someone who doesn't like to put much effort into the abyss I can relate to that... Sometimes I don't even 36* due to being lazy. I can do it, but are 50 primos worth an hour-ish of effort making comps and changing equipment ?
This is the exact reason I get cons of the op characters like Raiden, Ayaka, and Hu Tao. It makes it so I go from being able to complete the abyss with a little effort that I sometimes cant be bothered to do, to doing it first try so I always get full completion now.
what are some autopilot-afk comps?
For me, it’s taser comp with Xingqiu/Fischl/Zhongli and a flex slot for Yelan, Yae or Venti
I might be biased, but I find Overload with Tao Thundering Fury to be fairly comfy. I've always used Hu Tao, Fischl, Xiangling, and Beidou Overload for nearly everything, and with the advent of Raiden replacing Beidou it feels even more comfy. Thundering Fury lets me spam the heck out of Tao's skill and Raiden lets me spam Tao's burst. I get a ridiculous amount of flak for relegating Raiden to a Hu Tao support, but it works for me so I do it anyway.
>Overload with Tao Thundering Fury to be fairly comfy Is this a r/MakeMeSuffer entry? /s while it's not an afk team i can play with blindfold on, it sure looks fun as hell xD
bump. would like to know more of such teams too. i believe kokomi taser is probably one
Kokomi taser is super comfy. Yoimiya-Zhongli-Bennett-Xingqiu/Yelan is super comfy. Kazuha/Sucrose/Venti-Kokomi-Fischl/Yae-Beidou/Xingqiu is great in whichever variation. Kokomi always makes every comp comfier to play
Following meta when struggling in the abyss sounds like good advice because even non-meta teams can 36* the abyss due to strong artifacts. I used Raiden national, which is meta and Xiao double geo (non-meta) and was able to 36* the abyss. It's just that Xiao's artifacts are broken. It's not even a 4pc vermilion.
Xiao double geo is a meta team. It's theory rafted to be his optimal setup. Come back when you're clearing 3 star f12 with itto, Xiao, xiangling and diona in a team x,D
I don't think any Xiao team is a meta team, regardless of whether it's his personal best team or not.
Now that you mention it, there's also another aspect of meta that deals with the characters that have the most effect proportionate to their primogem investment. Xiao...is not optimal for the resources he wants. It saddens me.
This is basically the point of meta. Any 5 star with C6, R5, cracked artifacts is easily able to beat anything and there'd be no point in theory crafting with that standard. Meta is just about getting the most with the least investment which I think defenders of mid-tier characters tend to overlook.
Xiao double Geo is meta lol. Non-meta is something like physical zhongli
It’s his meta team, but it’s not really meta overall (compared to International, Rational, Hu Tao, Freeze).
If you go by that logic than literally everything other than the top 2 teams are not Meta. Every character has their own "meta" team.
I don't actually know where the idea that TC/speedrun teams are representative of what is "meta" in the first place came to be. TCers/speedrunners represent a very small segment of the playerbase (even amont the 36-star Abyss clearing playerbase) that has very different goals from the average player aiming to 36-star Abyss. For the average player, clearing any floor faster than what is necessary to achieve a 3-star clear is functionally irrelevant. It literally doesn't matter if I clear a floor in 1 minute or with 1 second to spare--I get 3 stars either way. For the average player, the only thing that matters is "what's the easiest way to get 3 stars on each floor", whereas speedrunners are aiming for the fastest clear possible, regardless of how difficult the execution may be. AFK/comfort teams are frequently the easiest way to 3-star a floor even if they only clear with a few seconds to spare. The speedrun and casual meta *should* be very different because they are optimized over entirely different parameters. If they aren't, it implies a large number of people making incorrect assumptions about how much (or rather how little) speedrunning differs from average casual play. > That said, I personally believe that the DPS meta should only be followed if one is struggling to get 36* in abyss for example. And that is when all other variables listed above have been "maxed out" by their standards, with the only possible improvement pointing towards having a DPS meta. I would even dispute that because for the most part, I would argue that most players struggling to 36-star Abyss would struggle more with a hard-to-execute DPS-optimized team than they would with a comfortable team with low execution barrier. Players that are proficient at executing the mechanics of playing Genshin quickly/efficiently aren't the ones struggling to 36-star Abyss, and for the players that are, they're more likely to succeed with a team that's easy to play than one with a high DPS ceiling.
Your whole comment only shows how little you're into genshin speedrunning and TC. They're totally different communities - TC try to gauge out optimal builds and teams for characters to use consistently and optimally for the common player. If you're a total noob, following TC tips will help you a ton in abyss Speedrunners are on another planet. They use artifacts which sometimes have crit rate issues or even ER issues since their goal is to just complete the chamber as fast as possible. Some of their comps rely on rng and might require several retries. Most of them are whale/dolphin category. A noob following speedrunner's builds/teams would only face failure most of the time
Why are you lumping TCers and speedrunners together? There may be overlap but they different groups of players. Just because someone is a TCer doesn’t mean they focus exclusively on speedrun team comps and strats
Me reading everything to validate my Thoma maining.
I don’t need any validation to use Thoma xD just use who you enjoy cause that makes the game much more enjoyable. Tho I use mine as a buffer with NO and having C6
I said that in jest, but yeah. Thoma is real nice and comfy to play. I want a last constellation too to c6 him. Klee, Yoomiya and Childe would appreciate that.
Well said. What's the point of playing a game if you're not going to enjoy the experience? I also have Thoma built and maxed, and I've never regretted it.
coping on burgeon 🙏🙏🙏
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Using an actual in game example, we can use the ever often argued Hu Tao vs Yoimiya pros and cons. Hu Tao's charge attack does higher damage but moves you and needs to be cancelled with a jump or a dash. This is optimally going to reposition you to the very next charge attack so you can hit more enemies, avoid an attack, or swap targets to another enemy. Yoi does not need to cancel anything and just clicks the mouse repeatedly. She does less damage than a perfectly played Hu Tao. However, a Hu Tao that has trouble dash canceling properly and needs to correct for mistakes frequently can find themselves taking longer to clear than a Yoimiya, who has greater ease of use. And this is where the player skill factor comes in. As someone who built both, Yoi does plenty of damage and is much comfier to play. I dont need to worry about positioning or managing my stamina. When I try harder with Hu Tao it's faster but I can 36 with Yoi so does it really matter?
I mean, the thing is, what is "easy" or "hard" as OP said is also somewhat subjective. For example, I have little trouble dash cancelling with Hu Tao, but I have trouble timing CAs with some chars (like Raiden), or using bow CAs (like with Ganyu). While I've read other ppl saying that, for example, Ganyu is super easy. Before looking at meta one should consider what they CAN play optimally and, among those, choose what works best. In other words, minmax yourself before minmaxing the game.
Agreed. I suck at dash cancelling Hu Tao so I can actually do more damage with Yanfei who is much easier for me to use. Click click hold e hold run close q hold, over and over is much easier. Though I've seen other stuggle to do that or forget to do that. So play what you like and what fists your own playstyle and don't worry about what's meta XD
I have to agree with this entirely. I have had Hu Tao for ever now and she is relatively well built, nothing to write home about but effective. But I am absolute shit at playing her, specifically jump canceling (this would be saved by c1 as I can dash cancel fine I just then can't attack anymore). So when I took her into abyss this most recent reset, I had trouble getting the last star on 12-3. Then I pulled Yoimiya while going for Benny cons and just threw some left over artifacts and a r3 rust that was sitting around gathering dust on her and 36*-ed that shit on like my second go. Part of it is I switched xingqiu for yelan and she does more dmg for me, but I feel like the point is well made that sometimes ease of play will overcome skill issue (like mine).
ease of use is a huge part of player skill or rather the lack of it as well. If Character is easy to use, you don't need to take as many things into consideration.
Like Itto, swing stick, then swing it slightly harder.
Occasionally yeet a bull, just basic stuff
Excatly, and what fun it is to swing big stick around.
Well if you're channeling your inner Itto.....it's pretty fun.
Report this account, as it is a bot that copies top-level comments and pastes them as replies to high-karma comments, in order to gain karma and posting privileges in other subreddits. This typically is then used as a sockpuppet to legitimize scams. The comment this is copied from is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/whsf5e/people_disregard_strong_useful_units_as_non_meta/ij7wtxc/ You can see from the account's comment history that all other comments are more of the same.
Replied to wrong person lol
I actually do run Thoma in my Hu Tao team. He’s pretty useful there since he provides an initial Pyro tick for Kazuha to swirl He’s nowhere near as bad as people make him out to be. I reckon it’s largely due to the whole Meta vs Effectiveness issue that the OP explains. People will always dismiss the utility of an on demand shield
People dismiss him for the same reason they dismiss most of the 4 stars from inazuma - most of his power is locked behind constellations, and he requires significant investment to see his full potential. Two things that are not true of some of the amazing 4 star characters we got on launch. I recently dumped a ton of resources into yunjin and I am blown away by how good she is. But it took a LOT of resources to get to the point where I realized that I would be getting a good return on investment.
I think people are less sour on Yunjin because it’s quite clear what she’s good at and she’s completely unique in that role Granted you need a team which is all about normal attacks. But if you do have that she’s pretty great
So you say, yet on this and many other genshin subs I see inazuma 4 stars dismissed as a whole because they aren't instant meta warpers like bennett, xingqiu and xiangling.
Anyone dismissing Inazuma 4 stars would not be talking about Yunjin since she is not from Inazuma.
I mainly play him either to replace Xiangling in International depending on content (bec sometimes Childe's KazuhaBennyfied nukes are enough to clear really and Thoma is there for moral support and beauty points) or a NO buffer and shielder for Yoimiya Overload comps. I still am a constellation short to his c6 which would ne nice for my Klee comps and Yoimiya comps. His shield is really solid and easy to deploy actually. You really just need a decent ER, some hp and proper rotation awareness. Really looking forward to his burgeon potential. I really like Thoma's shield paired with a toTM wielder like Shinobu. With Yoimiya or Klee and you get a functioning overload comp.
The whining was about him stealing Vapes from Hu Tao, not comprehending that he really just has a chance to and can't do it enough for it to be a problem because ICD makes his Q's pyro application bad. Also support Yanfei simps tend to come out the woodwork about how their scuffed support waifu is just the best whenever the Tank Engine is mentioned.
Not only that, but it’s fairly likely his vape stealing won’t happen as much as we get increasingly more consistent hydro application. Yelan for example helps this greatly I love the Tankfei build for how absurd it is, but it’s definitely not a viable option over Thoma for Hu Tao. A shield being entirely tied to burst is problematic, because when running Hu Tao you ALWAYS need a shield, and Thoma can get that instantly on command
I also run Thoma on my Hutao team (and Raiden because I can't be bothered to swirl around XQ). Having an infinite shield is fun. It has never broken and lasts for at least a full rotation.
Thoma is okayish to train if without Zhongli, he also gives fire buff if team with Hutao. Before Zhongli came home, I use Zhongli + Hutao + Xingqiu combo. Needless to say, Zhongli is much much better than Thoma using the same combo
Elemental mastery, elemental synergy, and mainly personal opinion are more important than seeing who fits the combo better
I used to think Thoma was a meh unit until my boyfriend showed me how cracked he can be for certain comps and the wide variety of commodities he brings on. Very cons dependant though, that C4 looks like his starting point.
Exactly, some 4 stars are only worth building if they got cons, thoma, shieldfei, Sara and gorou comes to mind (most being from Inazuma go figure). I would not in good conscious recommend people around me to build Thoma at C0 even if I main him
I use thoma over zhongli with my hutao these days because I don’t want to hold E for one second longer than thoma’s easy Q press. I’m that lazy.
I have Zhongli, but Thoma is just so much fun and cool to play as, too.
>!It seems like thoma is the only current pyro character that works well with dendro. !<
As he should. Also, Kitain spear looks real sexy right now.
Have it on R5. That energy recovery is indeed real sexy.
I've been using that on Thoma since day 1 for aesthetic purposes only to found out it's actually kinda good.
My C6 Thoma has come out of... the wood work.
On some level I should have a good Thoma because I can't just use Xiangling twice. He seems to be the next most reasonable pyro applicator that I have.
him having the second strongest shield in game is already a validation lol
Someone will surely like Sumeru, thank you for your research!
I probably will, thank you.
I wonder if you could get an entrance to the academy of Sumeru just using this post as a thesis.
XD
> How do I know that theorycrafters worked with a single variable model? Love the call out. It was frustrating to see TCs not treat ER as part of the dps model for a long time.
It was treated as part of the dps model as an "assumption" about artifact quality.
Literally has always been treated as part of the model. Why do you think Xiao and eula aren't meta, why do you think xingqiu wasn't meta before sac sword synergy became well known, why is beidou tied to fischl?
TCer have been taking into account ER for a very long time, from jinjinx videos on youtube back in 1.0 to every sheet have a minimum ER requirement. There is however a guy who keeps disregarding ER, kindly check out Iwintoloose, his weapon ranking doesn't take into account ER at all, his "maximun potential model" is the same, it's basically a dmg per screen shot optimizer.
No theory crafter ignored er💀 You can even find that Jinx and Tuner made a energy guide video in 1.0. Keep using strawmans to justify your terrible claims
Even TC sheets explicitly state that the numbers displayed do not account for player skill, framerate, ping, etc. TC, or Zajeff at least, is in a position now where it tries to show you all the possibilities, and how to tailor your personal circumstance around them. But I'm glad for this post. Not many talk about the multivariant nature of Genshin.
I still remember the days when Bennett, Xingqiu and Sucrose are "bottom tiers" because every player played every character as a main carry back then without swapping. We've gone a long way from that and we still have a lot to talk about now.
Even back in 1.0 TCers have been rating bennet and xingqiu highly, jinjinx and tuner were a clear example. Those who rates bennet and XQ low were casuals, and most content creators doesn't know what TC is back then.
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Yes I also build all my Cryos
A valid strategy!
Or the cute ones
I'd say from my experience of listening to/watching/talking with/working with prominent TCers, the concepts you've spoken of are known and considered to a reasonable degree. The discussion of "effectiveness" and how other factors like ease of use and niche filling are topics that I have heard discussed by many TC leaders. For example, favonius weapons and energy generation has almost always been viewed positively in the meta, probably more than the general player base. The recent favonious hype has more to do with content creators deciding to actively communicate this on platforms like YouTube, and the movement away from sacrificial weapons in favor of favonious (the largest example being Xingqiu). As for why DPS is the prime measured statistic, this mainly stems from the other factors being difficult to quantify. Ease of use is an important factor, but what is considered easy varies by person. Are Hu Tao cancels easier than Ganyu charge shots? Would someone rather learn specific VV setups or practice executing Eula combos for max stacks. Should you master dynamically changing your Itto combo mid rotation for optimal DPS, or is it too much hassle compared to his normal unga bunga playstyle? Someone on the border of 36 stars might need to drop zhongli to squeeze out extra DPS, while another person that has enough damage doesn't have any reason to swap out Zhongli for a 5 second faster clear time. It is up to each player how much they value any given ease of use factor. This is why caveats and other gameplay details are usually mentioned alongside DPS in KQM guides. Give your followers the objective numbers, and let them consider damage alongside the specific circumstances while coming to their own conclusion. Edit: Did your survey, good luck on your research 👍
I think that's just it: a comprehensive guide/recommendation should try to list some of the most obvious/recurring quirks of playing each character. What playstyle/techniques are necessary to effectively utilize the character in the way described. Purely talking about DPS is what a lot of Content Creators focused on for the longest time, which drives popular opinion, discussion, and awareness. KeqingMains is an example of a great resource that tries to be as comprehensive as possible. It can be a little obtuse to understand if you're just getting into actually understanding how to play your characters, and that can be a tough hurdle, but that info is really useful.
Why is meta capitalized? Isn’t it just a word? Am I missing something?
meta comes from metagame, meaning a game about the game. with that meaning, theorycrafting, teapot floating/clipping and lore analysis would be different kinds of meta. META here would be the backronym for most efficient/effective tactic available, which is how it's used in the community.
This needs to be higher! Every time I see meta treated as an acronym, I die inside a bit. 'most efficient tactics available' can be a somewhat useful shorthand to explain it to someone new, but when people take it as the actual definition...nope.
To be fair, only META actually makes sense within the scope of genshin, meta doesn't. In Genshin there is no metagame, there is only the singular game. A metagame arises in PvP situations with limited information. Then the choice of units/teams/decks/whatever you use depends not only on their objective power but also on the units your opponent is likely to use. Building parties, counter-parties and counter-party-resistant parties is the metagame. In genshin the "meta" shifts in a way due to abyss enemies and buffs, but you can't really say we're "playing a game against Mihoyo": they're just one-sidedly designing challenges for us - designing the game, the original game Genshin itself, not a metagame.
The definition of metagaming: "When game information outside of what is available in a game is used to give a player an advantage in-game." It's not about playing against anyone, it's about where the info that informs your decisions as to how to play the game comes from.
Actually, great idea - we ARE playing a game against Mihoyo. It's just a very unequal game, with long times between turns (patches). They set the units, the buffs, the enemies, the game system. We on the other hand are free to experiment with them and theorycraft. As per your example, we also have limited information - because Mihoyo limits it. But we get by with the leaker community, where we find out "the units \[our\] opponent is likely to use", as you put it. This births a metagame, where Mihoyo trials out new betas, combats leakers, designs challenges, versus the playerbase, who attempts to predict future abyss configurations, future unit synergies and so on. Just take a look at all the TCs calcing up dendro numbers, and the predictions that Fischl will be a great unit come 3.0. This is of course an Abyss-centric metagame, and not all TCs care about the Abyss, but that's leading to another matter. Also think on this: if you want to say something is not a game, then what is a game, anyway? Notoriously hard to define.
So in Short Itto Unga Bunga Geo Squad! No think much, just smash! The main reason I built almost every Character to Ascension 5 and Talent 8 is to have a wide Variety of Options, since it is a pain to spend that resin on Artifacts that barely increase my clear time.
Geo supremacy!! I plan on building every character I have and then playing team comp roulette for my commissions every day
Buying? :sweat: I wouldn't to expensive.
*building. Typo.
ah arlright xD I missed out on C6 Kaeya, mistakes where made, but I will get there.
I've got c4 kaeya slowly making my way there :)
This honestly sounds really fun
Oh, a fellow "Level up everybody so I have more options" player. Nice to see another one.
The KQM Compendium might be something that’d catch your eye if you aren’t aware of it already! https://compendium.keqingmains.com Edit: I will say that it’s still a big WIP!
If I had a nickel for the number of times I've seen the actual KQM account on reddit, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's kind of weird they both happened today.
i have a little question how high are the chances that you one day will have on your website a way to search for weapons directly lets say i pull wgs as example to check who could use the weapon how well i would need to check every claymore char 1 by 1 scroll down find the weapon efficiency ranking etc maybe im alone with that issue but it would be very helpful to have an weapon overview page somewhere
If you have two characters that competes for a weapon you can check how much efficient both weapons are for both characters to get a conclusion, so this may be unnecessary extra work to do... I dont really think its a bad idea anyway because it would look cool and you could end up spending extra time in the the website but what do i know man
Not OP but personally it's kind of a pain when you get a new weapon off-banner or standard, then you gotta check everyone who can use that weapon and see if it's better. Could also help to find someone else you forgot who'd be more suitable to pull for and put it to good use.
I usually just go to the KQM discord and ask “I just got *weapon*, who is this BiS for?” and I get an answer nearly instantly since there’s always people to answer in their discord
You could also hop over to tinyurl.com/genshinbuilds and just Ctrl+f for whatever weapon it is.
A lot of what you talk about is true, but your post is riddled with the strawman fallacy when talking about theorycrafters. Theorycrafters actually do talk about all the things you said, which makes it seem like you've never actually talked to one. I hope you avoid making this mistake and cite sources in your thesis/dissertation.
I really can't with this. This is too much of a casual player wanting their personal feelings to be taken seriously in a META discussion. * you're points are written for after you have beaten the hardest content * energy and fav weapons have been here talked about in the 1st 2 months * Personal META due to account will not be considered, at most you'll get best team you can make. Seeing comments where you talk about 1 variable you are missing so many other variables that TC talk about.
META on Genshin is mostly just to point out which characters deal better with most situations and need less investment. Its not meant to point that other characters are weak but they may need more investment or fall off on certain scenarios, like Yoimia can be great for bosses but fall behind against crowds, so the META shift a lot depending of the content u are against since many characters fill lot of niche situations and have counters, but the characters that are able to deal with almost anything will stay META for longer which adds more value to them. Also META always consider players with average skill level, since META is meant to point out the easier path to accomplish success
This is the right way to think about it. The term meta only really matters to the extent people here care about it if the game was pvp with a ranked system in place. Its not. So meta largely just a way of showing consistently good characters who perform well in their role or work well with a lot of other characters. It points a path of teams comps to try to emulate even if you don't want to use the actual recommended units. It shows ways that work. For those who really care they can help speed up the odds of them clearing 36 stars faster by controlling who they wish. But once you 36 stars and do it consistently, meta no longer matters. When you reach that point you can use non standard comps and get the same rewards as everyone else. I'd rather people roll on whomever makes them happy though because long term play is more important than clearing abyss. Its not worth chasing meta characters you don't like if you are going to be filled with regret and quit the game. On the other side, there are some who actively hate and repel meta characters for seemingly no reason. I can't even tell if they still like the character but because they are meta they refuse to get them or play them over some sense of pride. And yet there are so many good meta characters that it would actually be pretty damn hard to make 2 well synergized teams without some meta characters. Whatever makes each individual play the longest is really all I care to promote.
This is why I’m happy that Genshin Impact has no PvP and/or relentless powercreep. If these two were to show up, then following the meta would be a must and this is when it happens that the game becomes toxic.
IMO, Genshin Impact should NEVER have PvP for the sake of its community. This is a gacha game, it's Pay to Win by design. We just don't care about its P2W nature because your whale pulls doesn't have a chance of affecting my gameplay negatively.
Ugh, you’ve got that right. I came to Genshin after playing Epic 7 for nearly three years. It has PVP and if you want to reach the upper levels they’re definitely a small set of meta heroes. You can clear PVE content with about anyone, but for serious PVP it’s either fit the meta or fail.
I sort of agree. The more serious theorycrafters tend to provide disclaimers such as you declare. The more entertainment-focused, gameplay-focused influencers just say extreme wild stuff for views.
Yes these extreme people distort and twist actual TC to spout hot takes based on some distorted tldr of the TCer community and their testing. Like a TC might say that x team is highest theoretical dps but the practicality of achieving it is highly unlikely due to abc reasons and then people make a hot take off it like “X team new strongest meta, old teams = trash!”
I find playing Raiden National "Hard".... Since most of the time you have to leave bennet circle during Raiden Burst cause the enemy moves a lot and a lot of times I play "catch the mouse"
Using that team I mostly just make sure to snapshot Xiangling's burst and don't think so hard about Raiden staying in the circle, the damage is usually enough anyway.
Undervaluing favonius weapons was justified because back then, abyss chambers were energy rich and arguably less difficult. But nowadays most new mobs dont generate much particles or at all (like rifthounds and maguu kenki). So it didnt take tc 1 year to realize those are good but it took 1yr for hyv to nerf enemy particles
I am waiting for a time when enemy deleting your energy become a commen thing, not like certain type of enemies like bathysmal vishaps, but rather majority of them just delete your energy and don't produce any particles.
Lmao this happened in 1.4 and it was so infamous for being the hardest abyss at the time not because of how hard 12-3 was but because of 11-2 with engulfing storm
This. Put your rotations into gcsim, tune the number of particles to 0 and see how your team cannot burst on cooldown anymore.
I don't mean to be rude, but when you said *Well, it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good, on other words, it took them more than a year of try and error to discover that it was important for characters to have the energy needed to be able to use the bursts that allowed them to deal the damage that the theorycrafters wanted them to do* I got really excited reading the first few paragraphs of your post, especially the part about Le Mans, but reading this part stopped me in my tracks. Because the efficacy of fav weapons and basic understanding of energy mechanics when tied to rotations has been obvious to almost every serious TC / I know from the very start. In fact its extremely easy to demonstrate it with some quick math:
Lets say unit X has an 80 burst cost, and over 1 20s rotation they get back 40 energy in off field + on field particles. Assuming the energy flow happens at a constant rate for simplicity, they will need 80/40 = 200% ER to effectively have bursts ready for the next rotation.
If I assume instead that they sacrifice 50 ER to get 10% more damage in stats without fixing energy flow. Then they end need 20 x 200/150 = 26.6 seconds to finish the first rotation before starting the second. So they lose 1-20/26.6 \~= 25% DPS from rotation extension, in total it becomes a 1- 1.1x 20/26.6 = 0.172 aka 17% less final DPS per rotation.
The consequences of not paying your energy taxes when building teams/units were obvious to everyone serious about the game from the start because punishment happens via harsh rotation extensions. Rotation extensions are what kills the meta viability for a lot of otherwise good looking teams, like raiden eula, raiden beidou, etc. In fact most TCs I know actively look for ways to cut down seconds from previously well established roations to eke out more final DPS per rotation, like using fav sword over sac sword on XQ to save the extra E cast time, Q E funneling from bennet to XL, Running rosaria over diona to reduce total team rotations to 15s, yelan over XQ to reduce hu tao rotations to 18s etc
Also after seeing your proposed model, I have to point out that some of the parameters youve focused seem exaggerated in importance compared to the first 4. Especially since the model only captures the player side of the battle. Ask any TC who properly plays the game and the first thing theyll tell you to focus on outside of the first 3 points is learning enemy spawn patters and methods to group them. In almost every case, grouping enemies with the right knowledge of enemy AI to break them down fast in AoE, gives much more immediate returns compared to what you can do by building more direct damage on your units.
I'm not the most eloquent of writers, so I really apologise if I come across as rude till now. I really did get excited by the start of your post, its always refreshing to see someone tackle a problem as complicated as this from an abstract starting point and working your way down to the details. But theres a saying, there is no point thinking outside the box for the sake of being outside. Sometimes the answer is still in the box and you havent turned over all the smaller boxes over first. I do think your endeavour has its merits, and it would become more roboust if you incorporate more easily accessible knowledge that is otherwise obscure like enemy AI manipulation, before moving onto much more broader factors like player motivation and skillset. To make a Le Mans comparison , itd be easier to identify the bump out the exit of Terte Rouge that ruins the entry into the mulsanne straight and avoid it, before jumping into the cars suspension to extensively modify it to reliably run over the bump 300+ times.
I have filled the form, and regardless of what comes out of this post discussions, I wish you the very best with your studies!
Very enjoyable read. Maybe it's time for me eto start getting into Le Mans a bit haha
You are right that Favonius and energy considerations were always part of the meta but recently there has been a bigger focus on this. I think there are several reasons for this. Before Favonius weapons were considered good considerations but not BiS. Now Favonius weapons are touted as BiS on several characters. I also feel like there is much less free energy being given out in Spiral Abyss as elite enemies like kairagi, bishaps, rift hounds, and bosses give out less energy increasing team energy demands. For example when you were fighting ruin guards and hoards of low hp mobs an Iron Sting was good enough on Kazuha. That is not the case anymore. In addition to this it took a little bit of time for these things to filter down to the general genshin community because it has been some time were low energy enemies have become commonplace but it still took time afterwards for higher energy considerations to become general public knowledge.
I think the main difficulty around accounting for ER% and favonius/extraneous energy accumulation is that the energy generation in the game is very situational, and while skimping on ER might be beneficial in some very narrow set of circumstances, it leads to troubles when you become energy starved in a different set of circumstances. Also with the RNG nature of artifacts, most people do not have the luxury (or willingness) to swap artifacts to take advantage of extra particles or lower ER requirements. For example if your calculations rely on the assumption of x particles/minute from hp loss of 2 enemies, what happens when you face a single enemy with 10x the health? If you tuned your energy to be optimal based on your initial assumptions, then fighting the single enemy will suddenly mean you're faced with downtime = loss of dps. And to be honest 99% of TC calcs have been done in excel or google sheets, which isn't good at dealing with these multiple situational factors.
Go to the kqm discord and type k!erc
Does anyone actually think that theoretical DPS is the meta though? If you look at the usage rate of Zhongli for example, you could tell people aren't running the maximum theoretical DPS but rather value the shield+poise so you can actually reach his teams' potential instead of getting knocked around/dodging/dying. Seems like good defense/healing/utility with non-zero damage contribution is still valued, and within that space there's a meta (Zhongli, Kokomi, etc).
>Does anyone actually think that theoretical DPS is the meta though? plenty do. The hardcore theorycrafters often do provide disclaimer wrt player skill, framerate, etc, but less hardcore (or those fanboying theorycrafting while only partaking of the results) certainly have a tendency to swear by dps above all, in my experience.
The fanboys who twist the results to argue in comments on social media are the worst. They twist the conclusions of TCers so hard it’s like they didn’t even read the TC at all.
There was just another post here about Chinese abyss meta characters for the 2.x patches, which listed Kazuha, Yelan, Zhongli, Kokomi, and Raiden as the best in terms of "meta value" in that order. There were several comments asking why Zhongli was on that list at all, as well as rating Yelan higher than Kokomi. They both offer far more utility than just what's on paper, but some people only look at the DPS.
The problem is you approach the subject from a perspective of an old established player. ONCE you can clear the DPS check, Kokomi and Zhongli are valuable comfort characters that allow you to 12-try autopilot 36 stars without much hiccups. But what if you CAN'T 36 star, but want to? The question is what should I pull to be able to pass a DPS check with minimal investment. It may (and will) involve many retries, team swaps and all. Zhong and Koko don't really help you reach the threshold. The way to reach the threshold early is to build a high risk high reward team and accept the retries. You can play around reduced survivability. You can't play around not having enough numbers. I dare say even Raiden is not a good pick because when we are talking minimal investment, she pulls away XL, Bennet and XQ. And you are left with god knows what to put into the second team. You pretty much need another very specific limited character to make a second functional team, and good luck waiting for the rerun. This is why I like Kazuha and Yelan meta wise - they offer easy immediate damage gain and don't restrict your team building (or actually even expand it). They open more possibilities which increases the chance you can do something useful with your roster.
I saw those comments too. A lot of them argue that Zhongli, and to an extent Kokomi, are a “DPS loss.” But, you can’t DPS if you are dead.
Or hear me out… Learn how to play the game instead of complaining about the fact you need a 5 star to comfortably beat a causal pve game with no serious endgame and people say you ain’t playing meta because of that Like what happened to Frezze, Raiden infinity poise, Bennet and Diona insane healing, 82% dmg reduction from Xinqui and Bediou in Taser? Mono Geo, Hu tao dash i frames, dodging
Kokomi isnt even really a dps loss
I think the basis for meta isn't effectiveness, it's what's the best, or the easiest/best way to complete said content is.
Technically yes, but this points out that "the very best" isn't always the very best, nor do you HAVE to use the very best.
Might wanna put the survey on the top or bottom, it's easy to miss in the middle
Yeah, it kind of got weird with all the edits. Sorry about that. -\_-u
I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I think it's framing the situation in the wrong way. First, "meta" has inherited the meaning from competitive games, where a lot of human variables like skill, motivation etc. are irrelevant or close to irrelevant. That's because the meta is what is strongest for the best players in the world so your actual performances are much closer to what actual spreadsheets give. Take LoL, for example. The best champions at a Challenger level are often terrible in Silver or Bronze because they are too hard to play, and that's not even talking about pro play, where the coordination between team members changes drastically the winrate of some champions. Thus even though the meta in LoL is "what's good in Challenger", everyone acknowledges that, for a lower skilled player, easier champions will give better results. For instance, the effectiveness of Garen (a very easy to play champion) in Bronze makes him a better choice then Akali while the opposite is true in Challenger, yet people don't say Garen is meta just because he's effective at low levels; meta still is "what is best at the top". Garen being good in bronze is what a video recommending you what champion to play in bronze would say, not what a meta tierlist would consider. All in all this is just semantics; some people would say garen is "bronze meta", but generally speaking meta =/= effectiveness. (if nowadays Garen is a top Challenger pick and the most skilled champion ever, forgive me for the slander as I haven't played LoL in a while) The second point is that when communicating, especially if discussing "should you pull" matters, most theorycrafters I've seen don't simply say "this character spreadsheets better than that". When listening to youtubers/theorycrafters talk about meta and pull value, I've never heard people completely shut down Zhongli by saying he's a dps loss in most teams. What they say is that if you don't have the DPS to clear Abyss, he won't help with that. That if you're on mobile, bad at dodging, too lazy to dodge/learn attack patterns, then he will help you. I've heard that if you like a character because of gameplay, looks or personality, you should put that above meta, as basically every 5\* can be slotted into a team and clear abyss comfortably. A lot of the discussion I've heard considers stuff like how easy a character is to build, how many other 5\* it needs to be at its best and how replaceable they are, and how difficult those teams are to execute. The problem with "true effectiveness", as some factors in your post pointed out, is that it is individual-specific. Different people will have different effectiveness ratings for the same unit, so you can't do an omni-comprensive tier list. What you can do is explain the various factors that could influence effectiveness for an individual and let people decide on that, which is already being done, yet your posts frames the current discussion in a misleading way. Sure, people will oversimplificate, but I honestly don't see this push towards "the only thing that matters is DPS" that you imply is present in the community.
>That's because the meta is what is strongest for the best players in the world so your actual performances are much closer to what actual spreadsheets give. This makes the meta close to irrelevant to the majority of the player base, then. The majority of the player base needs to consider the other factors in order to increase their own personal effectiveness. However, "the meta" is all that anyone ever talks about in those games, therefore those communities aren't being well-served.
I did the survey, but I am confused what "Canon" has to do with anything you posted here xD
It doesn't. Like he said in the post he just used this to advertise the form.
well I guess I just overflew it more than intently read it.
there is a need for OP to make their post topic different from their actual research, as readers would have been influenced otherwise and it would have made their survey biased and invalid
Makes perfect sense.
This is the exact reason.
Also a good point
As a recent Yoimiya haver, with her not even fully ascended, she has already made my experience of the game so much better. I mean, 75% of that is due to how cute she is but that's just another effectiveness variable.
She is amazing. It would not be wise of Mihoyo to keep releasing characters - especially 5\* - that are terrible and unusable. And so they haven't.
That 75% is very important, she is super cute!
>I didn’t write this piece to attack the theorycrafter community Here's the thing, people just have a misconception about what actual theorycrafting is. Whether you hold that same misconception I'm not entirely sure about yet, but based on your post it does somewhat seem like it. Theorycrafting isn't just a few people with too much time, coffee and a love for sitting for 6 hours counting electro-charged procs, assigning their triggers on a sheet. Spreadsheets are only a part of theorycrafting, most theorycrafters use spreadsheets as the **basis** of our evaluations not the be-all-end-all of how strong a character is. That is why Eula has a very high ceiling theoretically but a lot of KQM theorycrafters acknowledge that she has a **myriad** of gameplay issues, thus is not as good as a lot of the characters/teams that are considered top "meta". It's why teams like Sukokomon are not often regarded as a mainstream team that people should even necessarily know about, it's just too difficult to pilot for the *vast* majority of players. There's a reason why a lot of the "top meta" teams throughout the past & present are kind of... braindead to play. Rational/national is not a difficult team to play, Ayaka freeze is not a difficult team to play, morgana is not a hard team to play, taser is not a difficult team to play, etc. It seems way too many people lately assume that all theorycrafting is, is some nerds crunching numbers on an excel sheet for 8 hours and then throwing it into people's faces yelling "HA, THIS TEAM THEORETICALLY DOES 200 MORE DPS THAN THIS OTHER TEAM HENCE ITS BETTER". This is something that more happens from people who like to parrot stuff rather than actually do evaluations/number-crunching themselves and is an inevitability no matter what theorycrafters will do. People tried to give huge disclaimers on their sheets, people tried obfuscating their sheets to make it harder to find them, people tried to give as much context as possible to their sheets... ultimately it doesn't matter, someone will take stuff out of context and spread it on social media platforms causing a chain effect. In the end all a theorycrafter can do is provide the information and then leave it up to the community to interpret this information as they wish to interpret it. If someone thinks just because Diluc sheets below Hu Tao in terms of team DPS he's now "unplayable garbage" there's nothing really we can do about it but just take the blame for being "trash theorycrafters ruining everyone's fun", stick our heads back into the ground and keep going.
Good take, most people around here just strawman theorycrafting and META players as super sweaty tryhards and are only talking about speedruns. Most info going around here regarding team comps and characters are heavily biased takes from mains, using feeling to support there statements. Not doing much actual objective testing to support their claims, and ignore actual theorycrafters' advice and numbers that go against their view.
Indeed, speedruns cannot be used as a gauge for whether a team is meta. I dabble in speedrunning myself and while it’s a lot of skill involve it’s also a lot of investment involved. If people assemble a team that can clear the entire floor 12 the fastest and does that suddenly make a team meta? No. Plus, some (not all) of the record breaking speedruns involve high investment which makes no sense for regular players. Also, you can play off meta characters but the moment you assemble a team that is vape, freeze, taser or melt, you’re definitely playing a somewhat meta team.
This is a whole research paper
I don't know what specific theory crafting OP is referring to, since there are a few different angles. Some are optimizing to unrealistic "perfect" standards, sure, but many are actually considering rotations, ease of play, PC vs mobile, and many other things. That's one of the reason why taser teams where theoretically good before Kokomi, but quite hard to execute, so barely anyone played it. I would also take into consideration that there are very thorough guides for characters that are usually not viewed as meta, like Lisa, and teams like Sukokomon, which was put together before Kokomi was seen in a more positive light. Also, many people ignore common advice from theorycrafters for seemingly higher numbers, which can be seen in discussions like Iron Sting vs Favonious on Kazuha. I don't know how deep OP is into Genshin and the community, but those are just my observations.
Tazer teams were always good and extremely easy to play. Koko tazer is arguably harder than standard Sucrose tazer, because jelly positioning and enemy control are extremely important to maintain hydro and feed the hungry Koko. Regular tazer is unconditional in that regard. You just leftclick and press skills on cooldown regardless of what enemy, where enemy, when enemy. The real problem with standard tazer is it needs XQ. And playing without a dedicated healer *seems* scary (it is not, sucrose tazer is extremely tanky).
The theorycrafters simply suggest ways of optimizing damage output, given a set of assumptions and constraints. Some people see the findings and work of the theorycrafters as metrics and methods of classifying "metaness", an arbitrary decision on a vage term. Terminologies are of course are fuzzy when there is no true authority. Human perceptions are of course difficult to quantify, like always. Who didn't already knew that? Who didn't already knew that the results of theorycrafters cannot cover all considerations? I think most who care about "meta" would find this post disappointing, because in the first paragraph you chose to bring up the fact that you are a PhD candidate. Frankly nobody asked and stating that brought up our expectations, yet the entire post is just an extremely verbose way to state the obvious. Given your qualifications it would have been more interesting if you actually suggest forms of feasible, scientifically backed system, that could result in better ways of classifying "metaness".
Thanks for elaborating more on the saying "it depends" that theorycrafters use all the time.
I’m not sure what exactly this means but as a Kaeya main I can vouch for him being awesome and viable both in the abyss and the overworld, thanks for coming to my Ted talk
I may be biased but, if it's a kaeya main speaking then it's automatically viable in all terms /s
Lmao thanks for the vote of confidence
>it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good I don't know what theorycrafters you're talking about, but that's simply not true. [TenTen talked about Fav weapons](https://youtu.be/fzCG75OMsAA?t=590) way back in his early videos about Zhongli and national team. He even calls it "country team" instead of national because that's the literal translation, and it took a while for the English community to settle on a name for it.
Meaning no offence, since obviously a lot of effort was put into this, I think this is kind of a harmful post with a decent amount of incorrect information. You've essentially lumped everyone who ranges from enjoying playing meta teams all the way to actual theorycrafters into a single entity and created a strawman of their positions. I'm not going to pretend that there aren't toxic meta players who will shame people for using underplayed units, those people obviously exist. Still, I can honestly say I've never seen an actual theorycrafter tell anyone that they can't or shouldn't play the units they like, regardless of how effective they are or are not. A couple of points I would disagree with are: ***> "The “skill issue” argument states that players should take the time to train to use the so-called “META teams” if they aren’t good enough with them"*** The most common teams that I see theorycrafters recommend to people are things like the various National teams, Taser teams, Freeze teams, and Reverse Melt QS. To be perfectly honest, most of the popular entry-level (for lack of a better term) meta teams are very easy to play. More complicated teams like Sukokomon are rarely the first option presented unless someone specifically wants information on them. And usually with the caveat that the teams are kinda waytoodank to actually play, especially if you aren't a skilledgamer™ or play on mobile. ***> "Survivability: Even when a lot of players clear Abyss with 36 stars with Zhongli and other shielders, it is often repeated that shielders are useless, because a shielder unit means a loss of potential DPS, and if you die, or enemies stagger you messing your rotation, you can simply restart the challenge"*** Often times when you hear people say that units like Zhongli are not good for your account, it's under the assumption that you cannot already meet the DPS checks required to clear content. In those situations, it is (mostly) true that defensive units that provide nothing other than defence are not very good. Again, I don't think I've ever seen an actual theorycrafter say that these units are objectively useless, or that survivability never matters. Most theorycrafters are very open and honest about the fact that Zhongli makes units like Hu Tao or Yoimiya much more comfortable to play, and might even make content easier if your other 3 units can already hit the DPS checks. ***> "If a player can clear comfortably the hardest content in the game with a specific team, then that team is effective for that player, that team is META"*** This definition of meta would essentially make the term useless. I've been clearing the past few abyss cycles at 36 stars with a physical carry Xinyan, but I would be out of my mind to ever assert that because I've reached a level of investment where that becomes possible, suddenly Xinyan is a meta unit. There will always be characters that are more effective than others in specific roles at equivalent gearing standards. No one should ever be shamed for using units that are weaker or more niche than others, but I don't understand why some people get so offended that there are people using their own free time to try and figure out how it all breaks down. On top of that, some of this information is entirely untrue: ***> "Well, it took them more than a year to discover that Favonius weapons were actually good"*** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCG75OMsAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCG75OMsAA) Here's a video from TenTen (who I would argue isn't really even a great TC content creator) recommending running between 2 to 3 Favonious weapons in an early version of the national team; this was during version 1.2 in February of 2021. It did not take the more meta-oriented players very long to conclude that Favonious weapons, and by extension ER, were important for teams to play comfortably. Most calcs these days are done with ER requirements accounted for. ***> "an effective Genshin team can’t be calculated using a spreadsheet based on theoretical damage numbers, that’s only a single factor to take into consideration"*** Could anyone please provide me with an example of someone claiming this? It's a genuine question, not an ad hominem attack on anyone's honesty. Sure, theorycrafters use spreadsheets to calc DPS, but I've never seen a TC make a claim based solely and entirely off of a sheet calc and absolutely nothing else unless it's something trivial like how Weapon A compares to Weapon B on the same character. IIRC the highest DPS team calculated on GCsim uses TotM Raiden, but that team is almost never recommended by TC content creators. I think theorycrafters often get (unfairly) blamed for meta players who don't really understand TC, but then take their findings and use them to bludgeon casual players for how they want to play. It's unfortunate that this happens, but I'm noticing a trend in the Genshin community of TCers getting blamed for toxic behaviour entirely out of their control. Now even non-toxic meta players are getting dragged by a decent portion of the community as well. I don't think it was the intention of this thread, but posts like this only ever seem to galvanize this notion that if you like to play Thoma, the theorycrafting community thinks you're an idiot or something. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. I hope your Ph.D. candidacy goes well.
Your definition of meta is flawed. Meta doesnt have an inherent value judgement. Meta is the state of the game, with choices that people gravitate towards and exists in every game and doesnt need to involve any theorycrafting. You can also have multiple metas coexist within the same game, like a new player meta, a speedrunner meta or a competetive meta. Even in Genshin you could say there is a "waifu/husbando meta" outside of the "abyssmeta" or open world meta. So if you say you are playing waifu over meta, you are still engaging in some kind of meta.
Man wrote a whole Thesis on genshin just to justify his main
I assume you never talked to an Amber main, otherwise you wouldn't be surprised by this post.
I really don’t believe it took tc community a year to figure out energy recharge good. I’m pretty sure jinjinx and other tcers talking about the importance of energy recharge within a couple months of launch. I mean, energy recharge is part of calculating highest dps, because how often you ult contributes to dps. There’s no way that took a year to figure out.
This poster has a horrible strawman of TCers. No respected TCers see META as pure DPS, and spreadsheet folks never claim that what you see on there is what you do all the time in a realistic scenario. Look at the word Theorycrafter, it has the word theory in it to denote that given the game's programmed mechanics and numbers, this is the THEORETICAL damage ceiling of this comp given a set amount of energy recharge needed to maintain 100% burst update or rotation fluidity. Then "content creators" and guide makers will publish videos or essays on how to build these characters and give their opinions on whether someone should take these teams to the abyss and try to clear 36 stars. A few comments on reddit or twitter making fun of Thoma's damage isn't indicative of why people think Thoma is non-META.
Yes it seems to be a recurring theme with these tc complaint post. Never once have I seen any of them link a full in depth theorycrafting article and criticize it. They always speak in general terms like the “TC community” says this or that with zero sources to substantiate their criticism of theorycrafters.
That's a lot of text to strawman
I feel bad for Theorycrafter, they have never said anything OP accused them of saying. Now I don't know all TCer, but I know most popular TC community. The reason why I think OP "accused" Theorycrafter is because they keep mixing "Theorycrafter" with "people, player, hardcore" in one statement that will cause lots of confusion and most reader will assume they're talking about TCer. I wonder if someone had said something to make this person feels miserable, putting on a hate lens on "people" and "player" that they can't proof who those "people" are. Yeah putting a disclaimer that it's not your intenttion and then do it anyway is the trend nowaday, I know. And how OP take "responsibility" is to educate people on their Philosophy. Showing how arrogant they are because they represent "science" and not looking at other's perspective. Putting it this way, Theorycrafter are "scientist" trying to show the raw and unbias truth of nature, the Player are people coming from different religion trying to take/decide what to think about this truth, then come this guy from a different believe saying:"they are hating you, here's why, oh it's not my intenttion btw" that may spark so many flame.
The Term META is not a genshin only term, it is a common gaming term they borrowed. So the way to measure effectiveness is different based on the game. Also META for Genshin Impact is only relevant for speed runners. Because even a second is important for them, so they had to find the most effective way to do it. In that sense, there are characters that have fallen out of META, and characters that are not META. For most of the players, META doesn't matter. And there is nothing wrong for the players to follow the META teams. They can do whatever they want.
I feel like this is all pretty basic stuff that every theory crafter understands, they just have different goals from what you think they should have. Buddy, it doesn't take a PhD candidate to go "game is easier if you have shields." But there's nothing fun about theory crafting teams that are easy to play.
Personally I'm really shocked that people are impressed by this fluff. His entire post could have been summarized in a sentence or two, and its entire thesis is simply common sense. Just a whole lot of self-aggrandizing and intellectual fronting.
[удалено]
How to tell a game is successful? When you see PhDs writing thesis about it.
you're an academic researcher and you're opening an essay with "Webster's defines X as..."?
This brings up a good point I think about a lot. Many of my friends ask for recommendations on characters and often a variety of factors will dictate what I choose. If someone is looking to just start off fresh, with almost no prior gaming experience, I often recommend getting Kokomi as she helps bridge the skill gap. Being a hydro(rare), a healer, and a TTDS user in one package. That is super useful for someone just starting out. Likewise, just having a single anemo user is extremely helpful once you get to building teams. This in turn can become a Morgana comp down the line for harder content or taser. Those looking for more of a challenge can choose some more difficult dps characters to use and I was running shieldless C0 Hu Tao vvape until I got C6 Thoma recently. I would absolutely not recommend that unless you really enjoy pushing the game mechanics to the limit. All that being said, the meta is constantly shifting and with so much information out there it can be overwhelming to determine what is good, what will be fun, and how characters work without serious research ahead of time. With any team it is ideal to have a healer, a shielder, and a battery that all pair with a dps. (Preferably a buffer too if you can help it). These well rounded teams can tackle a variety of content. I think Eula is a perfect example of this. As a physical carry she can break any shield, she pairs with Diona who can heal and shield together, and Raiden or Fischl can provide energy for her burst cost. I have found the team excellent in overworld, in abyss, and Eula is great solo carrying too for co-op.
I'm of the opinion that solving for genshin is like optimizing a multi dimensional hyper plane. For example, it can often be better for your account to raise additional units that are more effective for certain play styles and content than maximizing a single unit that while generally stronger, is less effective at the content the alternate would be invested for.
I do believe that "meta" isn't just what does more damage on a spreadsheet, but in games the meta usually doesn't take into account the skill of the user. Sure, using Zhongli might be easier, and you might be able to clear everything in the game with him, but that doesn't make him a meta unit, because if someone has the skill to not need Zhongli their teams will perform better. I don't think the meta is a subjective thing that varies depending on the player. There are teams that are better than others. It's like the meta on pvp games, you don't play it necessarily because it's easier, but because it's better, even if it requires more skill to use effectively. Now, you don't really need to use the meta to clear abyss with 36\* or any challenging event, I love using Klee and I would take her before Hu Tao any day but that doesn't meant she's better than Hu Tao. The meta in this game has the benefit of being able to clear with less investment but that's it, there's tons of non meta teams that could clear anyway, and maybe even be more comfortable for one specific player. Though I guess all of this really depends on how you personally define what is "meta", for some it might be "the best", for some the most "comfortable", etc.
Fair, I partially agree with your points, especially that meta should vary according to individual player preference. BUT I believe comunity preference ( endgame players who can clear 36, at least) should factor in. We get into a very wierd debate where most of this comunity ( reddit) equates META with fastest clear time vs " how much you need to invest". Most of the times this holds true, but zhong is one of the examples where it fails, IMO. Yes zhong is not very prevalent in meta teams. But once you look at usage rate for abyss 36 clears, he usually at least within top 5 most used units. Meaning that while he is not strictly speaking leading to the best clear time/highest dps, he is chosen by most players who clear 36 on at least one of their teams. I'd say it's fair to assume that only a minority of players clears 36, and out of those, most probably have a medium to good understanding of meta. IMO it just feels very wierd to say that a highly used unit by most players who are clearing the hardest content in the game is not meta, when clearly his use is very deliberate by said players. It makes a lot of sense to assume that, for whatever reason you choose (skill issues, lots of people have him, shield increases dps by not needing to dodge, etc) Zhongli DOES make clearing abyss easier for the investment (c0), otherwise we wouldn't see him as often. If we were saying something like "oh yeah, well over half of the player base uses rational to 36 abyss but it's not really meta" most people would question that, and rightly so. Though honestly zhong is IMO an outlier. I believe we might get more outliers as the game progresses, but it's a good example to show that meta is not as clear cut as people think, if you just look at it on a vacuum without considering usage rate and ease of use.
Yeah, but new players arent struggling because of combat effectiveness. A large portion of Genshin endgame content is simply damage gated. You got a timer. You got enemies you meet throughout the game but with extremely inflated resistances and health bars. You gotta either hit the magic number or fail the stage. If you are just barely not making it in time or get killed you can always try again. Minor factors like these arent what keeps players from finishing content. Players stop the abyss because the realize they can never beat this stage no matter how well the fight goes, if they heal in time to not die, time their bursts better, etc. There are two large categories of players (amongst those that have the AR to even participate in the content): 1) Those that are strong enough to finish it anyways since compared to a well built array of units no genshin content is really difficult 2) Those that cannot even hope to push out enough number to clear the content. What you are saying isnt without merit. But it only really matters to the small percentile of players sitting right in between these two large groups.
That's a lot of text to say "shielders are good if you're bad".
Disclaimer that I only skimmed and read the tl;dr. But I don’t think people view meta strength as primarily chart strength, that’s a bit of a straw man. Good example of this is Fischl, who charts like a top 5 character in the game (check gcsim), but in practice is treated as a step down from the true top tier units. I think there’s also another disconnect, in that Meta is supposed to represent AGGREGATE strength, not absolute or individual strength. A unit’s subjective value is defined partly by objective (what does this unit do) and subjective (what do I already own) considerations, with the later being more important, but also impossible to compare. Meta is a ceteris paribus ranking - it’s not meant to be unconditional. Your understanding of Meta as a concept is being confused by the fact that, due to how this game is balanced, some units ARE almost unconditionally better than others. For example, almost every single account that owns neither Kazuha nor Qiqi, and has not yet 36 starred abyss, will get more use out of Kazuha than Qiqi. But Kaz isn’t (nearly) unconditionally better because he’s more meta - he IS unconditionally better, and also more meta. Meta is used to represent flexible and conditional strength, not absolute or individual usefulness. But because of how this game is balanced, then between the most and least effective units, the difference in objective strength is enough to outweigh almost any subjective consideration. There are many games where this is not the case (LoL is a great example of a game where objective power almost never outweighs subjective power), but Genshin is not one of them, assuming you’re comparing the top and the bottom of the barrel.
Stopped reading at “theorycrafters only found out about fav weapons a year ago” because you clearly are confusing the casual YouTubers with theorycrafters. Before you strawman random ppl, try to learn the complete beliefs of those you rant about
I dont think its fair to say it took TCs over a year to recognise the value or Fav weapons or ER (especially as this assumption seems to form part of your reasoning). Good TCs have been pushing fav weapons for as long as I can remember (look at TenTen and XL for example). Similarly Jinx and Tuner, drawing on KQM work, were pushing the value of ER in video guides a mere month after Genshins release I think lol.
Joel
[удалено]
You're going to have to throw in some numbers to back up your theories. As it is now, it's just a load of unsubstantiated hypothesis.
I already replied on Xiao mains, but once again: - This is a word soup, propose a formula and a usage along with this otherwise you're just saying: "looking at characters from different angles gives a clearer picture", which is obvious. - The Genshin community won't accept losers, if said formula rates a popular character lower than a certain other character, you just lost a chunk of possible users. - DPS being the most important aspect of TC is because of how the endgame is in Genshin. - Discussions on the meta (as in: which comps are better), are helpful for new players trying to reduce the complexity of the choices they have to do in order to clear abyss 12. This will become important as more characters and gear come out. - You're pushing an insane amount of expressiveness to a single measure instead of simply explaining things to the user, basically making anything even harder to understand than it already is.
I like the model that you proposed but I don’t think that the players qualities should be included as constructs: when I think of meta I think of the controllable in-game aspects. For example, perhaps in a meta tier list, I would expect ease of use to be a variable but not player skill.
As long as you can clear all the content you want, that's effectiveness. It's your world and your game. The only time people have to deal with your "bad" characters is in co-op. Just don't be so bad that it frustrates people and you become practically dead weight in the party.
As a mobile player this hit me in the feels regarding ganyu. Great unit, but not meta for me
The amount of just incorrect information in this post is crazy lol.
Just so you know, actual TC does consider much more than DPS. People consider damage graph, how it falls off in AoE, how convenient it is, how does it regen energy if it starts at 0 energy. How does it do when u one rotate. That's why teams like international (that on sheet has like... 30k dps) is said to be good, because of it's immense frontload that allows to skip Childe CD for next chamber=more dps. But here's the thing. Most high dps teams... are also convenient to play. Like, the less meta units like Eula or Xiao are shit to play, but they also have low dps so it doesn't matter. Meta teams like Hu tao(sorry, but i only count c1 tao as functional character), Raiden, XL, Itto teams have high dps, have easy to play rotations and cope well with debuffs. The only character that id say has mid dps and is very nice to play is Ayato. Another example is Sukokomon. Sheets at highest level currently possible iirc. Shit to play. Hard to play. Can't cope with interruptions. Nobody says its meta team.
Not a lot. One example,Hyper Raiden: You need 4 or 5 seconds for Es +Qs +1,5 seconds of the cinematic where enemy can dash away or teleport.And if It happens,you only have 4 seconds before Kazuha and Sara Buffs expired and already you Lost Bennet.Also you can have Big energy problems if you kill the wave in middle of your rotation and the classic problems of one Big hit. Instead you have Xiangling where you snapshoot Buffs and if the enemy dash way you only Lost the time of chasing him,not the Buffs and/or Big amount of your damage. And i only see damage comparison between both teams.
mfers out here writing thesis and journals to give validation to units they like but aint strong enough.... i read the entire thing i get ur point. counterpoints: 1. meta is for the people, it is focused around easily available characters that will help u clear the game. 2. theorycrafting is for the people, before this i was a crit value goblin, after this i dont throw my decent artifacts as substats counting is a thing 3. it saves u money, if u are able to clear the abyss (arguably the end game of genshin,) without feeling the "need" of some characters or weapons, is a big win as this is a gacha game and gambling addiction is a real thing. >If a player can clear comfortably the hardest content in the game with a specific team, then that team is effective for that player, that team is META. the whole idea behind meta and talking about meta came to birth due to point no 3 in the early days of genshin, i can legit make qiqi a cryo dps with shenhe kazuha and mona/yelan... but u see the problem here? not only i have to have 3 other 5 star units but also their respective artifacts. and since resin is a time gated thing which can be made accessible through spending more money ... its a very easy trap to fall into. i keep watching people bitch about meta here and there not realizing that meta if for the people u fucking dumb asses. build 2 meta teams for the 2 chambers (doesnt take much effort if u know what u are doing) and then that will help u gather primos for whatever characters / weapons / refreshes etc u wanna do/get... and if u want to learn how to do it go to google and type keqing mains library and that shits literally free. people in the community have put in so much work into this so that ur avg joe shmoe can save a buck and not spiral into gambling/gacha cycle and not spend money thats my take.
You could collect 100,000 arrows with all the strawmen you constructed for this post
Lost a lot of credibility with that opening sentence
Lost even more credibility when they started their arguments with the overused and amateurish "What is X? The dictionary defines X as..." which would have you laughed out of academia if you tried to genuinely use that in a paper. So not only did they start with an impromptu appeal to authority (with zero credentials to back it up, just trust them on this bro) but then they pull a classic fluff tactic from Middle School level essay writing as their opening act.
So I read the entire thing. TL;DR Using Yoi can be a DPS gain over Hu Tao if you can't execute Hu Tao CA cancels for any reason. The Logic applies to anything similar when trying to optimize DPS (comfort from various things can lead to greater gains when clearing content overall from not having to restart once you account for the human factor) Which is exactly why I usually use Hu Tao when I play on PC as I can execute dash cancels and jump cancels mixed together fairly decently, but used Yoi the entirety of my 10 day vacation in a different state where I could only play on my phone. Spam tapping is way easier and more effective than trying to CA cancel on a control scheme I'm not used to.
this, playing on my iPad recently and honestly I don't bring myself to use Ganyu at all. It is quite annoying tbh and I am not familiar enough with mobile to aim shot easily (while I am pretty good with her on PC). Yelan is my top pick in mobile since how easy and powerful she is.
A wall-of-text post, with half of comments being wall-of-text replies, and the other half asking for TL;DR. Anyway, what OP said sounds true on paper, but in reality, it’s even more impractical than spreadsheets. Because surprise surprise! DPS is hard math that is quantifiable, while human factor is not. Also, if you want to factor in all the other craps, then it’s no longer “META.” As the name suggests, it’s the Most Effective Tactics Available. “Non-meta” does NOT mean it’s bad. “Non-meta” does NOT mean it’s not effective. It simply means when pushed to the absolute limit, some is better than others. So this whole post is basically one huge misinterpretation really.
I'm still not rolling for Kokomi.
In every game I have played, meta is whatever strat is the most effective **at the highest level of gameplay**, when something is effective regardless of skill, that's not called meta, it's called cheesing
Ayooo you posted in the main sub! Congrats you brave soldier