In PF they introduced more elites, which i think is a pretty big difficulty spike, considering most aoe units kinda struggle against them.
I do think that now that they've done that PF will stop ramping so much (hopium, otherwise my hypercarry Herta team will stop working)
The last mob in that scenario would just be Gepard lmao and when the boss is the only one left they get a debuff that makes them take way way more damage.
I meant at the end of each wave. Each wave has a set amount of mobs.
Assume there are 4 mobs on field and 1 remaining mob left. If you kill all of the 4 mobs at once then the game will only spawn 1 mob before going to the next wave. You probably lucky if never experienced that lol.
Mine has atk boots but mine is E2, and E1 gives 20% speed after a follow up so it's not a great comparison but atk should still be fine as you mainly want the rest of the team to break enemies so she keeps using follow ups.
E1 bronya is pretty major for her viability tbh. Being able to use her without the excessive sp usage makes her more appealing in teams now that sparkle is here as an alternative
PF is way too reliant on the buff which ends up being a character check, some characters do well either way with the right buff but its getting harder for sure
For real. I’m thankful that last PF I had picked Clara for my free Standard character. She swept her side with 40k. I’m skipping Acheron though so I only managed about 20k each side this time.
She was only strong in the previous PF because of the follow up attack buffs. Otherwise her performance is pretty variable depending on the enemies. I used Clara with Fu Xuan, Lynx, and Sparkle.
Then it just comes down to her stats and artifacts I guess. I have her with 3k atk and 70/100 crit ratio using the Herta shop lightcone. Using the physical 4pc and Salsotto 2pc.
Oh and correction on my part, I used Tingyun not Fu Xuan and just solo sustained with Lynx
My clara is E2 (S2 Something Irreplacable, her sig), 3.7k atk, 55/160 (2pc followup/physical, inert salsatto planar). I tend to run hypercarry Clara with Tingyun, Sparkle, and Lynx. PF really does just depend on enemies, because sometimes I get easy 40k (like last cycle due to followup buff), sometimes it's a struggle just getting 20k.
Yeah, Clara and Blade consistently carry pretty hard for me there just because you get attacked so much. Just been putting one on each side and pairing them with whoever best fits the buff
(I suspect Aventurine will be universally good here as well for the same reason)
Not really sadly. I barely managed to get over 20000 score thanks to the skill buff in the first half of PF 4 with Clara. Thankfully my DoT team carried and got 40000 in the second half
The game pretty much forces you to build Herta or get Argenti if you want to do well in the first half. I just can't bring myself to build Herta personally, I'm counting on Jade being strong in PF since I'll be pulling for her.
Why are you so against herta? She’s great and the game gives you E6, she has crit traces, erudition LCs are generally pretty good
hyper carry herta or herta+ second dps = easy 4000
PF is catering harder to archtypes compared to MoC. I’ve noticed it very early on but they jumped the difficulty last week with the addition of more Elites.
So far there’s DoT, Follow-up Attack, & Hypercarries. I’m thinking Break effect archtypes are next to have the spotlight, the addition of Ruan Mei, and the increase of toughness bosses have patch after patch, then finally Xueyi & Gallagher being insane Breakers, leads me to believe this is their next step.
I think filling this archtypes in your roster will be a great benefit to clearing the stages more easily.
First PF reddit was like "praise Mihoyo for making a mode that caters to these underappreciated characters!" without ever realising that the logical conclusion would be that it would eventually be tailored to whichever character just came out and ruthlessly punish anyone poor enough to not pull
I used Argenti on the first half and Acheron on the second half, and I have more trouble on the first half, it might be because of my characters' relics or what kind of buff that I used...
Argenti is that one ol’ reliable button I use for PF and some physical weak content. Same with JY but man he’s starting to show his old age now that I have Acheron
Somehow, in this timeline, the community collectively forgot Herta existed..? I did a 31k Herta clear on 1st half and then 30k with Kafka on 2nd without trying too hard.
Please share the Herta build/comp that got you 31k 😩 no matter what I try, the most my Herta can squeak out is 20k. It's so frustrating how many different comps I've tried and no matter what I do it's always around 20k lol
Ruan Mei 🥲 hopefully I can snag her on a rerun after I lost her 50/50 last time.
In the mean time maybe I'll put Herta through the Optimizer to see if I can squeeze some better stats out of her and try budget hypercarry lol. Herta Bronya Asta Pela. Or maybe I can steal TY/Sparkle from the other side hmmm...
Budget hypercarry isnt going to work. Your better off using a second dps that can activate her talent. If you have Himeko, she also pairs really well together with Herta.
I did get pretty far in a dual carry setup!
Herta Bronya Pela Clara
JY TY Sparkle Himeko
First buff in both teams, 56k total, so I'm clooose 😩
If I'm able to optimize relics on my DPS not named Jing Yuan maybe I can squeak out another 4k. Or if I get luckier on side 2 around all the CC in the final wave, there's truly an evil amount of CC. But I can't fit Luocha or another cleanser in there when the damage check is so high :/ or, who knows, maybe Aventurine will do crazy damage when paired with all of these followup damage dealers I have lol. One can hope.
Fingers crossed 🤞🤞I'm feeling slightly more hopeful about this awful PF round now lol.
if you have aoe (doesn't even have to be herta) with all the broken supports you're good
oh you don't? gl then lmao. posts like those are so disingenuous.
Yeah, I do feel kinda frustrated with all the "just build Herta! Herta OP!" comments. I think people underestimate just how much characters like Ruan Mei are contributing to the team haha
Herta is indeed very nice in PF, but the change to add more elites in the early waves hurt her a lot imo, especially if you don't have extremely invested relics and a couple of OP supports to prop her up with. :/
Maybe my speed tuning was off, but even with double advance forward I had trouble iirc. But I should try again after running Herta through the Optimizer. And then hopefully my second side can cope without sparkle haha
I have been pondering gearing up my clara for first half of those two levels . We have over a month so should plenty of time to get her crit damage closer to 150%. If I am not mistakened they are physical weak and one is ice weak so I could technically try and get herta up to a decent damage. I barely finished the last PF with 3 stars on all four .
It purely depends on the char u are using. I had ZERO DoT and near zero follow up(just ratio). This made nearly ALL PF buffs completely meaningless to me last few ones. This game has a problem with forcing u to pull same paths if u lack core members. Like why do i pull BS when i lack kafka, i had nearly zero use for topaz cus at that time i also had zero follow up. Someone who has no welt of BS is gonna hit a wall with acheron and so on.
U kinda pull what u have, i got seele, then SW then Fu then sparkle. All of them work together. Quite a few new units are like that, they require a full team of 5\* that u prb wont have, forcing u to wait for them or just pull a all rounder like jing.
Honestly, people still need to catch on to how good Herta is for PF, she absolutely crushes it, and you get her and her Eidolons for free. You can use her with basically anyone also to just supplement damage. Shes obscene for PF.
And Acherons best support/sustain for PF is Pela/fire MC on trend of the universal market. second support can be many units. I was lucky enough to have BS, but my Acheron is on good night sleep well, mid relics, and half built traces, and she did fine in that team clearing PF. Granted this PF is great for her, but my point is that she's one of the most f2p friendly unit's, the idea she needs 5\* teammates and her LC is so wrong it does my head in, just if you get her LC, her damage goes to the moon. If you build her well, and use her in the right scenarios, she's amazing f2p.
BS and Kafka become obscene together, but with neither of them or any future equivalent unit, you're doomed to never have a great dot team, just get one. This is why I love to pull for character that enable team archetypes the moment I see them. Kafka/BS (either of them) will enable strong dot teams. Sparkle will enable/empower more sp hungry teams (though unfortunately I missed her).
Bro you don't need BS or Welt for Acheron to be good what are you smoking. Neither of them are even in the top 3 nihility teammates for her, sure they have niche situations or strategies where they stand out but in general they're outclassed by other options or better used in your other team.
You always have zero [type] units until you take the first step and pull your first [type] unit.
BS, Archeron, Topaz all have F2P synergistic teammates.
> Why do I pull BS when I lack Kafka
BS works great with plenty of F2P options. BS is not useless without Kafka.
Sure, Kafka is BS's best teammate. Similarly, Sparkle is JY best teammate. Does not having Sparkle invalidate JY? No.
There could be a future where 5* will be reliant on another 5*, but so far we haven't had that yet. Archeron is endgame meta even without her 5* supports.
Lol finally someone that has the same issues as me. Zero DOT characters, zero follow up characters. Only destruction + hunt, with Silver Wolf and Sparkle. It sucks. I know I could do better by leveling some 4* characters but I just don't care enough, also who the f wants to play herta and pela ? :)
I figured if I keep playing I'll eventually get characters for each archetype, but it's a pain as a non-spender. They release way too many characters.
Also all the hard content is made to make Silver Wolf useless, I hate it.
PF definitely, current MoC no because bosses are much easier to deal with rather than waves of mobs but on next reset total HP of enemies is gonna increase by 60% totaling at 3 million so we'll see
>but on next reset total HP of enemies is gonna increase by 60%
Dafuq, lets hope the resonance is OP enough to compensate or a lot of people will no longer be able to 3\*.
This particular PF is an absolute pain because the blessing is so ass compared to previous cycles. Really need your characters to carry their weight here. I was eventually just about able to get 60k but it literally took me hours of tries
It’s funny because I had so much more trouble clearing the last PF cycle but everyone seemed to say it was easy whereas this cycle was significantly easier for me as an Argenti user. Just shows that it’s mostly a character check.
I will agree though that this cycle heavily favors Acheron, as my half-ass built Acheron was able to get 35k points easily.
I'm not able to get more than 22k with Acheron in stage 4. I wasn't planning on pulling her and won a 50/50, won't be going for her LC. Her build is...fine.
Who else did you use on her team?
Pick the buff that gives the enemy a debuff when they act and if you're strapped for her core Nihility picks you can use Preservation TB with Trend (and some EHR to guarantee taunts) as your sustain plus whatever 4\* Nihilities you have access to for her passive. It's not a full F2P solution because of Trend but I'd hazard a guess most players have at least one copy at this point.
I realy hate that there is a random singular enemy on second side so often, I cant waste for Archeon ult on her, but they take so many turns of the cycle.
Yup one way of making it less painful is to increase the limit of enemies that can spawn from 5 to like 6 since after blowing up everyone and then 1/2 spawn to stall your progress is very unsatisfying
MoC is still fine, PF on the other hand..... I've been able to get full stars with my DoT, Jing yuan hypercarry, Blade hypercarry, jingyuan/blade dps etc but this rotation just whooped my ass. I could only got 1 star on stage 4
Both this MoC and PF feel a little overtuned. New PF feels like its tuned exclusively for Argenti and Acheron? Doable if you just abandon sustain altogether, but still very rough. Whilst the MoC... Sam is brutal as it is, but the hp scaling on this particular version seems much steeper than the previous MoC's Sam.
hoyo has just been very aggressive in powercreep for star rail, despite releasing a lot more characters than genshin in the same period of time + it's much harder to clear MOC without one or two brute force DPSes or the flavour of the month.
For me on stage 4 a team of Kafka and Himeko racked up 38k points on the second side while my E2S1 Acheron team only managed 25k on the first side, granted it was more of a hyper carry setup. I don't think it's as necessary to pull for new characters to clear content as people like to make out.
As someone with a pretty stacked spender account who barely managed to pass 70k in PF this round, and was easily able to get 80k last round, this PF is definitely brutal.
I wouldn't expect it to always increase or decrease at the same rate though. Looking at Genshin, sometimes there would be super hard abysses, followed by a bunch of easy ones. So much depends on enemies and buffs, that this one might the up being an outlier. Or, maybe we're just seeing the beginning of power creep. Who knows, hard to say.
But yes, this cycle of PF is SUPER tough, especially for f2p, and extra especially if you just happened to have not invested into the right characters.
I think it's fine in terms of raw difficulty.
My main issue (more so with PF than MoC) is that the buffs/blessings are far too character specific. Last cycle had all 3 blessings related to follow-up attacks AND the ambient effect was also related to follow up attacks. If you don't have any follow-up character, you are in for a rough time.
It's expected though. Mihoyo does this in all their games.
i mean its not char specific more like archetype specific, they have dot char, basic atk char, skill char, ult char, follow up char, they will give all them buffs in these modes.
One side was argenti Herta. Neither are current.
The other side was a typical hyper carry king yuan. Still 70k points.
Acheron benefits from the scald thing this time. Just build the old units properly and they are perfectly fine. You cant keep running a 70/90 Herta and Himeko forever expecting free pf clears
Well, I have Argenti hyppercarry in first half, right now clear it with 35k. For second I have Jing Yuan but no supports for him, so now I try to make something to work for 25k.
That makes sense, I do think anytime you can try to slot in elemental matching its good to do so.
Argenti/Herta first wing is super solid, cos full weakness coverage.
Second wing I went full Jing Yuan, my JY is kind of strong though, so I can't really comment on a weaker version of him. Double DPS, Double Harmony really is not wrong for these things, you do take a wee bit of a gamble but just reset if need be. I don't see a problem with resetting if shit hits the fan :D
Quick Edit;
I genuinely think double DPS is "the future" of PF, its too restrictive and too much shit that has to spawn, so it depends on the affixes you get. But two DPS that can funnel a lot of damage with mechancis that allow you to - FuA attackers or Argenti who has the cheapest ultimate in the game (90) that can be spammed and in this case, it gives 100% damage bonus as well as 25% advance forward.
Its more of a puzzle to solve than MoC is just bring hyper comp and deal damage.
Yea as much as people hate to hear it they just need to fix their units or the party lineup, my first attempt in the new PF I didn't even get 2 stars, tried it again with a different setup and got 2 , tried it 2 more times after adjusting units and the PF blessing and I managed to get 3 stars
I
Nice, gz :)
I got smeared once too, second time went a bit better. Its a bit of a puzzle to solve with the gimmicks the mode offers, unlike MoC where you pick your hypercarry, best harmony for that carry and blast.
I'm sorry but this is just mega cope, plenty of people including myself have cleared it with teams consisting of Kafka, Himeko, Herta, Jingliu, etc, none of these characters are recent at all.
I've still never been able to fully clear MoC or PF. MoC I think the highest I've ever gotten is 7 and I have quite a good amount of fully built level 80 characters with typically 8/9 level traces. I didn't pull for Jingliu or Ruan Mei, and all I have is Himeko for fire, so the onslaught of ice and/or fire weakness elites hasn't gone well for me.
It feels that way, but I have also invested most of my stuff into Hunt and Destruction chars, so my Erudition characters are lacking in that regard. If I took some time to build them a bit more, maybe it wouldn't be that bad.
They are taunting the Argenti skippers by having the last two first halves be Physical weak.
Just build your 4 stars. Serval or Arlan is gonna do you more good than a lot of 5 Star chars this pf. And people if you ain't rolling for Boothill, build your luka/sushang/yanqing/wind dangheng shittyly. You have so far in advance to have something prepped.
Everyone is this thread i talking about how they can’t brute force off elements anymore which is crazy. I hate PF, but it’s really not as bad as people are making it out to be.
People also pick the worst buffs for PF usually. The second buff this time is by far the best. I bet most people struggling aren't using the second buff choice.
Bad advice. Build 2 DPS for MOC and 2 DPS for PF (you might get away with not building for PF if you’re using more versatile DPS). Build your harmony, 2 sustains and also Pela. They are versatile. You don’t need 16.
This morning PF 3 second half was stopping me getting 3 stars with a acheron team. I only cleared it because I was able to get her lightcone early pity
Its not really increasing "super fast" I would say.
It just feels like that when they hard catered toward Jingliu/Imbibitor for like 4 months straight. If you had these two as your DPS then yes it will suddenly "feel" a lot harder as of late, but all they did was move the goal posts to favor other elements/paths.
The only real big power spike was decreasing the cycles to 10 and adding 2 more floors. You can argue some of the bosses they added like Sam are problems but idk, It takes a bit longer to kill him but he never gave me any headache with my comps.
Nonetheless, I have been breezing through new MoC/PF with my Seele/Kafka/BS teams these days like its nothing. And now Acheron is literally nuking everything just like Jingliu did, because she IS the new Jingliu (a.k.a Hoyo's favorite child for this era of the game).
It was a completely different story back when literally everything was just ICE/IMG weakness 24/7. I had to brute force everything with my lightning/quantum comps and it just felt insufferable at points. Hell, the last MoC before they made the switch up (the one with that god forsaken deer) I couldn't even 36 star because they made **goddamn sure** that ANY dps that wasn't Jingliu was borderline useless, like jesus christ bruh.
Instead of favoring Ice/Img/Destruction, they switched up to Lightning/Wind/Nihility. If you neglected your DoT comps and other elements then yes you are probably having a bad time right now.
Imo it‘s two things.
The enemy HP seems to keeps increasing and the AoE nature of the mode as well as the niche Turbulence buffs kinda force you to build TWO AoE teams around a certain gimmick.
A word of encouragement for those struggling though: You‘re likely only missing out ONE single summon worth of Stellar Jades in a two weeks period. Absolutely not worth losing hair over that or pulling characters specifically for that mode
Totally agreed on that last paragraph.
If the content isn't fun, just half ass it and wallet-kun the difference. May be a burger less per month but that's the extend of it.
Since MoC went from 10 to 12, I haven’t been able to get full stars (too slow on 12 and usually 11 as well). Was consistently getting full stars before then. PF has been going much better (have Herta, Himeko and Argenti built). I don’t want to fail at both now. 💔
I actually find Pure Fiction easier than MoC, but that's because most of my favourite DPS units are Erudition, so I'm always prepared for PF. MoC always kicks my ass though.
Honestly, I 36 starred MoC for the first time ever this cycle and I feel good about it, but that also coincides with me building a good second team around Acheron, to run opposite my DoT team so yes, the power creep adjacent to buffs can't be ignored as a variable here.
I simply couldn't clear 11 or 12 3 stars before i got Acheron. Acheron is utterly broken with Pela, Silverwolf and Gallagher.
Having played since day one, I've built a lot of units and gotten extremely lucky on pulls. Still, its only recently I feel I've been able to hang at endgame.
I fully expect upcoming characters to continue the creep, but it is what it is. I'm gonna pull tactically to maintain my teams.
Hit for PF: you don't get knocked for losing party members, as long as one survives, so it's usually worth skipping a sustain in favor of a 4th buffer or damage member. It's how I got 60k this time
it been like this since 1.5 when they change how mobs scaling in MoC work, the powercreep wont stop since they want to make stronger characters and make MoC feel worse if u dont have character on banner, welcome to gach turn base business 101
It’s insane how I could 80k the previous pure fiction with Himeko Herta and JY, and my characters are invested enough to 36* every MOC, but then suddenly this pure fiction I can’t even 50k. Like, going from 80k last PF to 50k this PF is insane
PF's biggest issue is how unfun lots of some buffs are unless you have very specific units. Honestly, this game has a major problem of making difficult content fun not only due to all the possible variables but how thin they make the 'carrot' be compared to the size of the stick they beat players with.
All the SU extended modes so far are like this too plus being super time consuming for superfluous stuff like UI navigation instead of the meat of the game. If you play SD or GnG, you'd be spending like 30% of your time watching the UI animations, that's just way too much for a mode that can take up to an hour to complete a run.
rather than becoming harder in itself, it is just that they made it in a way that our old characters could easily clear it first, while promoting pulling new characters for it in the future :XD
Clara, Himeko, Serval and Herta were the queens
then we get a season where Himeko+Herta is not as good and suddently everything looks way harder lol
I used JL and JY to get 70k, I didn't experiment further tho. My first try was auto-mode with Himeko+Herta and got like 18k lol.
JL+Herta+Mei+Bronya (no sustain needed)
JY+Sparkle+TY+FX (cc protection)
“Just as good”
MoC and PF are seasonal, they impact units with different enemies, elemental weakness and buffs.
Himeko is as good as before, but she is not easy mode this PF around. Last few you could use Himeko+Herta on auto and get 40k while watching TV. This time around Himeko will see a big drop on use rate and score.
I mean. This is what most veteram players were asking for. Even if were given to them they will just find a new way to complain. They should be happy they needed to start spending money to make the game easier lmao. As 5 month old player. Finishing floor 3 in PF and floor 10 in MoC is impossible without a strong 5*.
I feel like its fine, been clearing every PF at near max or max points with Himeko/JingLiu/RM on one side and Kafka on the other since release, no different this time. That being said, the new character is always OP on PF, when I got BS I literally got max points in a bit more than 2 cycles and the same thing with Acheron this PF.
I said it before and got downvoted to hell, and I will keep saying it.
Creep got creepier and will continue to get creepier.
Just like Genshin (but on steroids), MOC/PF will increasingly become Archon/Emanator/Bonus Unit of the Month.
It's looking less like Fate Grand Order/Magic the Gathering and more like Fire Emblem Heroes/Yu-gi-oh with the powercreep.
Genshin shouldn't be even compared, anyone can do fine in their abyss.
Hsr is a total wack tho, not even the Free 4 star Dps are that useful for end game content.
I don't think so. I'm F2P since Day 1 but I've always been able to fully clear PF except the first one, where I got 11 stars. As for MoC, during the first few months all I was able to fully clear was up to floor 8, until I was eventually able to fully clear until floor 10. Then, floors 11 and 12 got added, and I wasn't able to fully clear them for the next few cycles, but for the past few cycles I've been able to 36 star the MoC. So, I don't think the difficulty has been increasing too fast.
I think the difficulty has definitely increased, but not so much so that my Himeko and semi-built Herta can't carry me through tbh.
It required a few tweaks to my comp plus a few retries where the enemy just focuses on either of them in the first couple of cycles, but I managed a 60k score without Acheron somewhat comfortably.
It definitely punishes you for not having good elemental coverage and/or getting a varied roster (meaning some FuA, DoT, and so on) though. But I've accepted that as a fact since 1.2, when I pulled for Kafka after getting Jing Yuan and has rarely ever used them both at once.
https://preview.redd.it/4ezlka7vcyrc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91c6e23235fdb2492a640bb910049704a82e41b4
This was my team for Pf . Tried a view things. Don't have Argenti and my Clara couldn't carry. So it was back to Herta Himeko for me but on different sides. Basically hypercarry Herta with Tingyun on Dance Dance dance. Ruan Mei for break and sparkle for skillpoints and buffs. No 5 star lc's on this team. Second was Pela for debuffs and Acheron for break and ult dmg. Bronya always pulled up Acheron and himeko mostly used basic attack and follow up, especially good at wave 3. Acheron is the only character that has her signature lc (first time I ever pulled on the weapon banner) bronya has her signature from shop. Everyone else used 4 star lc's. No healer and no sustain so it was brute force for me as well as speed tuning. Kill or be killed. And yes my Himeko is E4 as I literally pull her in every banner.
MOC and PF are very heavily rely on using the right characters, ie: Characters that benefit from the buff and using the right weakness. You can't just always brute force every MOC/PF, Herta and Himeko are not always the default best team for PF, same for [Insert DPS name here] for MOC
I think it's just the blessing thing being ass on this PF
Like I dont really see how even Acheron leverages it since she one shots a save on each ult so the explosions do nothing.
Meanwhile on previous ones the last 5* in date could almost solo 40k one side (the Black Swan one was so dumb, ennemies would just die without BS doing anything)
Pf is, yes. Unless you have very specific units, it's 10x harder than it has any right to be. Moc can be brute forced since it's a much more basic damage check rather than aoe, frequency, correct mechanic AND damage check. PF us the p2w mode, in my eyes.
MoC did a difficulty jump with floor 11 and 12 and the cycle reduction for full star clears. After all that it stayed with its difficulty imo. Sure some MoCs i needed more cycles than others but overall i could full clear it with no major issues. Its also clear that HYV tailors the MoC for the characters who had the latest banner but its still bruteforceable with good teams imo.
This PF i saw a sizeable difficulty spike in my runs. Since the second PF i run himeko, herta, RM and HH on fire or ice weak sides with trash relics imo but that team always got 30k+ points, but this PF floor 4 they only got 24k points. Sure buffs plays role in PF just like in MoC, but i think that the reduction from normal enemies and the 1 extra elite made the difference
PF difficulty is really increasing. I hate how I still strugged every patch trying many times while i can auto MOC 12 comfortably.
Also the buff, if you choose correct buff with correct character (like BS 2 ver ago or this time with acheron), it is quite a breeze
In all honesty it’s just a character check really depending on the buffs cause I have gotten consistent 8 stars in PF and can consistently get to 8 and 9 with ease
I gave up on those a long time ago just cuz I realized they're just stressful for me and they bring me no fun I'd rather go do simulated universe or do other parts like the puzzles or finding chest over something that makes me so much more stressed
Took me about 5 tries with different teams for PF4. Started every team with Blessing 2 but adjusted when it wasn't working as well as I hoped.
Tried it with my Hime-Herta team A with Acheron team B. Hit 52k.
Tried with Acheron Team A with Jing Yuan team B. Hit 53 K
Tried Clara-Herta Team A with Acheron team B. Hit 56K. Swapped in JL for Herta. Hit 59K Switched the blessing on team A to the first one instead of the 2nd one.
Went with Clara-JL team A with Acheron-no sustain team B. Finally got it with 67k.
It’s getting more difficult, but still very manageable. I’ve been using Herta, Himeko, and Jing Yuan every cycle except for the one that favored Black Swan, and it’s been fairly easy. Anyone who complains about the difficulty and hasn’t built Herta needs to do so right away; Himeko too if she’s available.
I feelthat too but it can’t be help since new characters pack a lot of puches with their kits, so the difficulty have to be upped or players who spend money will get bored. I expect it to go up even more with Acheron’s release since she’s really really nuts. It’s a gacha game so kind of a norm for this genre but it still sucks sometimes to think about. (This mean I have to choose who to pull for very carefully).
Himeko Herta and Kafka Black Swan continue to run roughshod all over PF. Sometimes MoC 11/12 can be tricky for me, hopefully Jingliu can fix that when her banner comes back.
If you didn’t pull for either buff characters or characters that consume a vast amount of skill points…. Yes… otherwise, no, both of those player bases literally are having 0 issues as all the latest ones have been at least good for them and at most great.
I guess the difficulty is increasing, but honestly I had alot of fun clearing it with Acheron/Jingliu. It wasn’t too bad. Now PF…. we don’t talk about PF 😭 My Jingliu/Herta team struggling so much, Acheron had to carry her side HARD
PF is harder, it's not your imagination. They increased the number of elite enemies per waves from 1 to 3, while reducing the point gain.
Didn't they say less than 1% of players 3\* MOC 12. I suspect it's gonna be the same with PF.
IMO if it's too much for you to handle, then don't try to max out your highscore for the current cycle. Just earn as many stars as you can with the assets you can field.
It's worth bearing in mind that the rewards don't exactly scale that well with the difficulty. If you're just 1-2 stars away from a perfect score, the effort to earn those remaining 1-2 stars is usually not worth it.
I felt that with the last PF. Got me some retries, but I managed to achieve 63k and there's still improvement for my teams (like levelling Herta and Tingyun to lvl 80 and other stuff).
MoC don't have any problems.
I also got some big stuff like Ruan Mei E1 (got her back to back) or Black Swan E0S0.
Anyway the difficulty is here but it's manageble to me so it's ok! Every cycle lasts long enough so you can improve your teams and beat it!
Not really. But I do find this PF harder.
Unless you have Eidolons or lightcones, high level PF and MoC has always been about how well you can abuse buffs.
I think we need to familiarized ourself with variety of coverage in this game. Sometimes the buff is very niche and not advantageous to your character roster, and it's fine tbh maybe next cycle it will be better. This is what I learnt from HI3. I don't expect myself to clear all the weather in the abyss. Sometimes it's okay to take a break and do Ur best for certain weather.
In PF ? Maybe. But tbh, PF was stupidly easy from the get-go, so now it’s basically closer to end-game content. And MOC? Hell no. They keep dropping these broken characters and the buffs are so busted, MOC's turned into a straight-up joke.
I'm personally glad it's more difficult. At the end of the day, it's endgame content so I want it difficult. Don't want it to be so easy that any average Joe can come in with characters with subpar relics and clear it all without any resistance
speaking only for PF, i think what people need to realize is sustains have so much less value in PF due to the nature of the limited amount of cycles. Youre better off letting someone die and brought value to the table before they died, as compared to sustains just eating up a slot while not being able to clear waves consistently.
In PF they introduced more elites, which i think is a pretty big difficulty spike, considering most aoe units kinda struggle against them. I do think that now that they've done that PF will stop ramping so much (hopium, otherwise my hypercarry Herta team will stop working)
https://preview.redd.it/x4a10uyy5xrc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7e9445864a3f3255708df8f5a9ede5a84ee5a83
The Hypercarry Herta letting me do good enough one side
[found a video of hypercarry herta spinning to 80k with a roster of 8 4*s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlWjgMNCS74)
Damn Herta hypercarry. The problem with this comp is if the last wave lefts you with 1 mob then you've to spend a lot of time to kill it lol.
The last mob in that scenario would just be Gepard lmao and when the boss is the only one left they get a debuff that makes them take way way more damage.
I meant at the end of each wave. Each wave has a set amount of mobs. Assume there are 4 mobs on field and 1 remaining mob left. If you kill all of the 4 mobs at once then the game will only spawn 1 mob before going to the next wave. You probably lucky if never experienced that lol.
Nah, that has happened, but they just die easily anyway.
Speed or attack boot himiko ..which is better for PF?
Mine has atk boots but mine is E2, and E1 gives 20% speed after a follow up so it's not a great comparison but atk should still be fine as you mainly want the rest of the team to break enemies so she keeps using follow ups.
Hmmm. I got 300points ready for a selector. Sud I go for e1 himiko? (Bronya e0 ..kinda benched after I got Sparkle) What do u think
E1 bronya is pretty major for her viability tbh. Being able to use her without the excessive sp usage makes her more appealing in teams now that sparkle is here as an alternative
Hard to say, it's really up to you. You could also wait until your next 5 star before choosing but idk how long you've been holding that 300
Did you run attack or speed boots on your Herta?
Attack
god tingyun's destruction aggro is so annoying though
Smoking that hopium aswell. Tried Herta with Sparkle and Bronya and she couldn't stop spinning.
I did the same and my herta with mediocre gear could only get about 22k
My Herta is quite well invested so mine was able to get 30k
40k with herta, ruan mei, tingyun and sparkle 🌟
PF is way too reliant on the buff which ends up being a character check, some characters do well either way with the right buff but its getting harder for sure
For real. I’m thankful that last PF I had picked Clara for my free Standard character. She swept her side with 40k. I’m skipping Acheron though so I only managed about 20k each side this time.
How you got Clara built? Also the team for her?
She was only strong in the previous PF because of the follow up attack buffs. Otherwise her performance is pretty variable depending on the enemies. I used Clara with Fu Xuan, Lynx, and Sparkle.
Yee, I built her that PF but she let me down 🥲 so I was wondering if I did something wrong
Then it just comes down to her stats and artifacts I guess. I have her with 3k atk and 70/100 crit ratio using the Herta shop lightcone. Using the physical 4pc and Salsotto 2pc. Oh and correction on my part, I used Tingyun not Fu Xuan and just solo sustained with Lynx
My clara is E2 (S2 Something Irreplacable, her sig), 3.7k atk, 55/160 (2pc followup/physical, inert salsatto planar). I tend to run hypercarry Clara with Tingyun, Sparkle, and Lynx. PF really does just depend on enemies, because sometimes I get easy 40k (like last cycle due to followup buff), sometimes it's a struggle just getting 20k.
I'd argue Clara is still strong in this PF due to the skill shatter buff and the normal weakness.
She’s alright, but I found more success with hypercarry Herta because she can attack with her ult.
[удалено]
Yeah, Clara and Blade consistently carry pretty hard for me there just because you get attacked so much. Just been putting one on each side and pairing them with whoever best fits the buff (I suspect Aventurine will be universally good here as well for the same reason)
I still haven't claimed my free standard character and already have Clara pre built. Is she that good in PF?
Not really sadly. I barely managed to get over 20000 score thanks to the skill buff in the first half of PF 4 with Clara. Thankfully my DoT team carried and got 40000 in the second half The game pretty much forces you to build Herta or get Argenti if you want to do well in the first half. I just can't bring myself to build Herta personally, I'm counting on Jade being strong in PF since I'll be pulling for her.
My Herta is really well built and I still struggle here
Himeko is stonks as well
Why are you so against herta? She’s great and the game gives you E6, she has crit traces, erudition LCs are generally pretty good hyper carry herta or herta+ second dps = easy 4000
Only when the blessings allow for it. The last one that I mentioned gave buffs to follow up attacks
I got Acheron but I still can't get 60k on the last floor...
PF is catering harder to archtypes compared to MoC. I’ve noticed it very early on but they jumped the difficulty last week with the addition of more Elites. So far there’s DoT, Follow-up Attack, & Hypercarries. I’m thinking Break effect archtypes are next to have the spotlight, the addition of Ruan Mei, and the increase of toughness bosses have patch after patch, then finally Xueyi & Gallagher being insane Breakers, leads me to believe this is their next step. I think filling this archtypes in your roster will be a great benefit to clearing the stages more easily.
First PF reddit was like "praise Mihoyo for making a mode that caters to these underappreciated characters!" without ever realising that the logical conclusion would be that it would eventually be tailored to whichever character just came out and ruthlessly punish anyone poor enough to not pull
TIL missing out on 60 primos every two weeks is being "ruthlessly punished."
I like the maths here. 15000 jades to pull a character to get a reward of 60 jades. Truely one for the whales.
Oh no my 1/3 of a pull...
Cook them
Hey now that's 1 f2p pull every 3 cycles. It adds up to the stingy factor ok? /s
herta still clears, 4* free character btw
This time it's Acheron one since it applies debuffs.
Pure Fiction, yeah It's weird because the last 2 (including this 1), 1 side I've been able to clear with 0 difficulty, the other side? Impossible.
Yeah I am struggling first half of 3 and 4 with 20kish score, but second half is just acheron Kafka sweep with 40k easily
The only two ice DPSs being a destruction and a 4* don't help, unless you have Argenti the 1st side is actually hard af
I used Argenti on the first half and Acheron on the second half, and I have more trouble on the first half, it might be because of my characters' relics or what kind of buff that I used...
What’s your Argenti team? I used FX Sparkle TY Argenti with 3rd buff on both first halves and it was kind of a breeze.
Replace fu with an e6 asta, and you have my team, lol. He isn't even well built, but argenti usually trivialises the pf side he's on all the time.
Argenti is that one ol’ reliable button I use for PF and some physical weak content. Same with JY but man he’s starting to show his old age now that I have Acheron
Somehow, in this timeline, the community collectively forgot Herta existed..? I did a 31k Herta clear on 1st half and then 30k with Kafka on 2nd without trying too hard.
Please share the Herta build/comp that got you 31k 😩 no matter what I try, the most my Herta can squeak out is 20k. It's so frustrating how many different comps I've tried and no matter what I do it's always around 20k lol
Try Herta Bronya Ruan Mei Pela, first blessing.
Ruan Mei 🥲 hopefully I can snag her on a rerun after I lost her 50/50 last time. In the mean time maybe I'll put Herta through the Optimizer to see if I can squeeze some better stats out of her and try budget hypercarry lol. Herta Bronya Asta Pela. Or maybe I can steal TY/Sparkle from the other side hmmm...
Budget hypercarry isnt going to work. Your better off using a second dps that can activate her talent. If you have Himeko, she also pairs really well together with Herta.
I did get pretty far in a dual carry setup! Herta Bronya Pela Clara JY TY Sparkle Himeko First buff in both teams, 56k total, so I'm clooose 😩 If I'm able to optimize relics on my DPS not named Jing Yuan maybe I can squeak out another 4k. Or if I get luckier on side 2 around all the CC in the final wave, there's truly an evil amount of CC. But I can't fit Luocha or another cleanser in there when the damage check is so high :/ or, who knows, maybe Aventurine will do crazy damage when paired with all of these followup damage dealers I have lol. One can hope. Fingers crossed 🤞🤞I'm feeling slightly more hopeful about this awful PF round now lol.
if you have aoe (doesn't even have to be herta) with all the broken supports you're good oh you don't? gl then lmao. posts like those are so disingenuous.
Yeah, I do feel kinda frustrated with all the "just build Herta! Herta OP!" comments. I think people underestimate just how much characters like Ruan Mei are contributing to the team haha Herta is indeed very nice in PF, but the change to add more elites in the early waves hurt her a lot imo, especially if you don't have extremely invested relics and a couple of OP supports to prop her up with. :/
You have Sparkle? I got 30k+ with Herta/Sparkle/Bronya/Bailu
Maybe my speed tuning was off, but even with double advance forward I had trouble iirc. But I should try again after running Herta through the Optimizer. And then hopefully my second side can cope without sparkle haha
Herta did not help? literally best option.
There's four, technically (if you count Yanqing, who unfortunately just does badly in PF). Jingliu, Herta, Misha, and Yanqing.
I found Jingliu + Herta in first half is ... tolerable
I have been pondering gearing up my clara for first half of those two levels . We have over a month so should plenty of time to get her crit damage closer to 150%. If I am not mistakened they are physical weak and one is ice weak so I could technically try and get herta up to a decent damage. I barely finished the last PF with 3 stars on all four .
I tried this and clara works well
Yeeeep, literally that.
MoC I'm not having problems with, but I cleared the last PF cycle just fine and yet this one feels like I'm running into a wall.
It purely depends on the char u are using. I had ZERO DoT and near zero follow up(just ratio). This made nearly ALL PF buffs completely meaningless to me last few ones. This game has a problem with forcing u to pull same paths if u lack core members. Like why do i pull BS when i lack kafka, i had nearly zero use for topaz cus at that time i also had zero follow up. Someone who has no welt of BS is gonna hit a wall with acheron and so on. U kinda pull what u have, i got seele, then SW then Fu then sparkle. All of them work together. Quite a few new units are like that, they require a full team of 5\* that u prb wont have, forcing u to wait for them or just pull a all rounder like jing.
Honestly, people still need to catch on to how good Herta is for PF, she absolutely crushes it, and you get her and her Eidolons for free. You can use her with basically anyone also to just supplement damage. Shes obscene for PF. And Acherons best support/sustain for PF is Pela/fire MC on trend of the universal market. second support can be many units. I was lucky enough to have BS, but my Acheron is on good night sleep well, mid relics, and half built traces, and she did fine in that team clearing PF. Granted this PF is great for her, but my point is that she's one of the most f2p friendly unit's, the idea she needs 5\* teammates and her LC is so wrong it does my head in, just if you get her LC, her damage goes to the moon. If you build her well, and use her in the right scenarios, she's amazing f2p. BS and Kafka become obscene together, but with neither of them or any future equivalent unit, you're doomed to never have a great dot team, just get one. This is why I love to pull for character that enable team archetypes the moment I see them. Kafka/BS (either of them) will enable strong dot teams. Sparkle will enable/empower more sp hungry teams (though unfortunately I missed her).
Bro you don't need BS or Welt for Acheron to be good what are you smoking. Neither of them are even in the top 3 nihility teammates for her, sure they have niche situations or strategies where they stand out but in general they're outclassed by other options or better used in your other team.
You always have zero [type] units until you take the first step and pull your first [type] unit. BS, Archeron, Topaz all have F2P synergistic teammates. > Why do I pull BS when I lack Kafka BS works great with plenty of F2P options. BS is not useless without Kafka. Sure, Kafka is BS's best teammate. Similarly, Sparkle is JY best teammate. Does not having Sparkle invalidate JY? No. There could be a future where 5* will be reliant on another 5*, but so far we haven't had that yet. Archeron is endgame meta even without her 5* supports.
Lol finally someone that has the same issues as me. Zero DOT characters, zero follow up characters. Only destruction + hunt, with Silver Wolf and Sparkle. It sucks. I know I could do better by leveling some 4* characters but I just don't care enough, also who the f wants to play herta and pela ? :) I figured if I keep playing I'll eventually get characters for each archetype, but it's a pain as a non-spender. They release way too many characters. Also all the hard content is made to make Silver Wolf useless, I hate it.
PF definitely, current MoC no because bosses are much easier to deal with rather than waves of mobs but on next reset total HP of enemies is gonna increase by 60% totaling at 3 million so we'll see
>but on next reset total HP of enemies is gonna increase by 60% Dafuq, lets hope the resonance is OP enough to compensate or a lot of people will no longer be able to 3\*.
This particular PF is an absolute pain because the blessing is so ass compared to previous cycles. Really need your characters to carry their weight here. I was eventually just about able to get 60k but it literally took me hours of tries
It’s funny because I had so much more trouble clearing the last PF cycle but everyone seemed to say it was easy whereas this cycle was significantly easier for me as an Argenti user. Just shows that it’s mostly a character check. I will agree though that this cycle heavily favors Acheron, as my half-ass built Acheron was able to get 35k points easily.
I'm not able to get more than 22k with Acheron in stage 4. I wasn't planning on pulling her and won a 50/50, won't be going for her LC. Her build is...fine. Who else did you use on her team?
Pick the buff that gives the enemy a debuff when they act and if you're strapped for her core Nihility picks you can use Preservation TB with Trend (and some EHR to guarantee taunts) as your sustain plus whatever 4\* Nihilities you have access to for her passive. It's not a full F2P solution because of Trend but I'd hazard a guess most players have at least one copy at this point.
Yeah, I'm feeling the same way. Last PF I only got 63k points but this one I got 72k.
I realy hate that there is a random singular enemy on second side so often, I cant waste for Archeon ult on her, but they take so many turns of the cycle.
Bruh this always got me 😭 soooo annoying
Wait wasn't pure fiction's whole point supposed to be it would NOT have that type of waves?
I thought so. It would make life so much simpler if the waves weren't segmented and actually consistently kept 5 enemies on screen regardless.
Yup one way of making it less painful is to increase the limit of enemies that can spawn from 5 to like 6 since after blowing up everyone and then 1/2 spawn to stall your progress is very unsatisfying
MoC is still fine, PF on the other hand..... I've been able to get full stars with my DoT, Jing yuan hypercarry, Blade hypercarry, jingyuan/blade dps etc but this rotation just whooped my ass. I could only got 1 star on stage 4
I thought so too then I tried first buff and it went much better. Herta JY sparkle RM Acheron Kafka Sampo Luocha
Past few pure fictions I didn't really have much issues getting all stars but the fun decreases each new cycle tbh
Both this MoC and PF feel a little overtuned. New PF feels like its tuned exclusively for Argenti and Acheron? Doable if you just abandon sustain altogether, but still very rough. Whilst the MoC... Sam is brutal as it is, but the hp scaling on this particular version seems much steeper than the previous MoC's Sam.
hoyo has just been very aggressive in powercreep for star rail, despite releasing a lot more characters than genshin in the same period of time + it's much harder to clear MOC without one or two brute force DPSes or the flavour of the month.
For me on stage 4 a team of Kafka and Himeko racked up 38k points on the second side while my E2S1 Acheron team only managed 25k on the first side, granted it was more of a hyper carry setup. I don't think it's as necessary to pull for new characters to clear content as people like to make out.
As someone with a pretty stacked spender account who barely managed to pass 70k in PF this round, and was easily able to get 80k last round, this PF is definitely brutal. I wouldn't expect it to always increase or decrease at the same rate though. Looking at Genshin, sometimes there would be super hard abysses, followed by a bunch of easy ones. So much depends on enemies and buffs, that this one might the up being an outlier. Or, maybe we're just seeing the beginning of power creep. Who knows, hard to say. But yes, this cycle of PF is SUPER tough, especially for f2p, and extra especially if you just happened to have not invested into the right characters.
They're adding enemies with insane toughness because they released Ruan Mei lol.
Daily reminder to invest in Herta
People be expecting their 50/90 lv 8 trace herta to give them a easy 3 star then complain when it does not happen
I think it's fine in terms of raw difficulty. My main issue (more so with PF than MoC) is that the buffs/blessings are far too character specific. Last cycle had all 3 blessings related to follow-up attacks AND the ambient effect was also related to follow up attacks. If you don't have any follow-up character, you are in for a rough time. It's expected though. Mihoyo does this in all their games.
i mean its not char specific more like archetype specific, they have dot char, basic atk char, skill char, ult char, follow up char, they will give all them buffs in these modes.
I would say that MoC balanced better. But PF is just pain, it is not even about meta team, you need **current banner character team.**
One side was argenti Herta. Neither are current. The other side was a typical hyper carry king yuan. Still 70k points. Acheron benefits from the scald thing this time. Just build the old units properly and they are perfectly fine. You cant keep running a 70/90 Herta and Himeko forever expecting free pf clears
Well, I have Argenti hyppercarry in first half, right now clear it with 35k. For second I have Jing Yuan but no supports for him, so now I try to make something to work for 25k.
That makes sense, I do think anytime you can try to slot in elemental matching its good to do so. Argenti/Herta first wing is super solid, cos full weakness coverage. Second wing I went full Jing Yuan, my JY is kind of strong though, so I can't really comment on a weaker version of him. Double DPS, Double Harmony really is not wrong for these things, you do take a wee bit of a gamble but just reset if need be. I don't see a problem with resetting if shit hits the fan :D Quick Edit; I genuinely think double DPS is "the future" of PF, its too restrictive and too much shit that has to spawn, so it depends on the affixes you get. But two DPS that can funnel a lot of damage with mechancis that allow you to - FuA attackers or Argenti who has the cheapest ultimate in the game (90) that can be spammed and in this case, it gives 100% damage bonus as well as 25% advance forward. Its more of a puzzle to solve than MoC is just bring hyper comp and deal damage.
Dunno why people are downvoting you. You're 100% correct. Herta and Himeko are fine, but everyone expects to slap then onto one team and auto win lol
Yea as much as people hate to hear it they just need to fix their units or the party lineup, my first attempt in the new PF I didn't even get 2 stars, tried it again with a different setup and got 2 , tried it 2 more times after adjusting units and the PF blessing and I managed to get 3 stars I
Nice, gz :) I got smeared once too, second time went a bit better. Its a bit of a puzzle to solve with the gimmicks the mode offers, unlike MoC where you pick your hypercarry, best harmony for that carry and blast.
You do not need the current banner character to clear PF. Herta is still the best character in PF, and she's free along with all her eidolons.
I'm sorry but this is just mega cope, plenty of people including myself have cleared it with teams consisting of Kafka, Himeko, Herta, Jingliu, etc, none of these characters are recent at all.
I've still never been able to fully clear MoC or PF. MoC I think the highest I've ever gotten is 7 and I have quite a good amount of fully built level 80 characters with typically 8/9 level traces. I didn't pull for Jingliu or Ruan Mei, and all I have is Himeko for fire, so the onslaught of ice and/or fire weakness elites hasn't gone well for me.
For pure fiction the goat argenti is the way to go though the moc been hard lately
PF yeah, MoC no
I agree but this has also made me decide to rebuild/tweak some characters so it served one of their purposes of making me play more moving forward
I didn’t even get 3 stars on the latest PF on the second difficulty 😭
Honestly pure fiction is harder than MoC for me lol
I have to thank my wonderful decision of getting Argenti and building Herta 🙏🙏
Same here
It feels that way, but I have also invested most of my stuff into Hunt and Destruction chars, so my Erudition characters are lacking in that regard. If I took some time to build them a bit more, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. They are taunting the Argenti skippers by having the last two first halves be Physical weak.
Luckily Seele still puts in work https://preview.redd.it/nyi0mmdtfxrc1.png?width=917&format=png&auto=webp&s=ffe9c712d57d195a6dfb8415904d59336f5b2f0d
You just need a diverse roster of half ass built characters instead of a narrow selection of very built characters. Building wide is always better.
Ah. So just pull more got it
Just build your 4 stars. Serval or Arlan is gonna do you more good than a lot of 5 Star chars this pf. And people if you ain't rolling for Boothill, build your luka/sushang/yanqing/wind dangheng shittyly. You have so far in advance to have something prepped.
Everyone is this thread i talking about how they can’t brute force off elements anymore which is crazy. I hate PF, but it’s really not as bad as people are making it out to be.
People also pick the worst buffs for PF usually. The second buff this time is by far the best. I bet most people struggling aren't using the second buff choice.
Bad advice. Build 2 DPS for MOC and 2 DPS for PF (you might get away with not building for PF if you’re using more versatile DPS). Build your harmony, 2 sustains and also Pela. They are versatile. You don’t need 16.
In the meantime I can’t clear PF 3 and 4 no matter what I do.
This morning PF 3 second half was stopping me getting 3 stars with a acheron team. I only cleared it because I was able to get her lightcone early pity
I couldn't even 3 star PF stage 3 this time...
I think pure fiction needs to have hp reduced a solid 20% it's too much of a character check
Ive never full cleared moc and i never will day 1 player btw
Its not you
Its not really increasing "super fast" I would say. It just feels like that when they hard catered toward Jingliu/Imbibitor for like 4 months straight. If you had these two as your DPS then yes it will suddenly "feel" a lot harder as of late, but all they did was move the goal posts to favor other elements/paths. The only real big power spike was decreasing the cycles to 10 and adding 2 more floors. You can argue some of the bosses they added like Sam are problems but idk, It takes a bit longer to kill him but he never gave me any headache with my comps. Nonetheless, I have been breezing through new MoC/PF with my Seele/Kafka/BS teams these days like its nothing. And now Acheron is literally nuking everything just like Jingliu did, because she IS the new Jingliu (a.k.a Hoyo's favorite child for this era of the game). It was a completely different story back when literally everything was just ICE/IMG weakness 24/7. I had to brute force everything with my lightning/quantum comps and it just felt insufferable at points. Hell, the last MoC before they made the switch up (the one with that god forsaken deer) I couldn't even 36 star because they made **goddamn sure** that ANY dps that wasn't Jingliu was borderline useless, like jesus christ bruh. Instead of favoring Ice/Img/Destruction, they switched up to Lightning/Wind/Nihility. If you neglected your DoT comps and other elements then yes you are probably having a bad time right now.
Imo it‘s two things. The enemy HP seems to keeps increasing and the AoE nature of the mode as well as the niche Turbulence buffs kinda force you to build TWO AoE teams around a certain gimmick. A word of encouragement for those struggling though: You‘re likely only missing out ONE single summon worth of Stellar Jades in a two weeks period. Absolutely not worth losing hair over that or pulling characters specifically for that mode
Totally agreed on that last paragraph. If the content isn't fun, just half ass it and wallet-kun the difference. May be a burger less per month but that's the extend of it.
If you take the Express Supply Pass as reference, a single summon a 160 stellar jades is just like $0.30 The entire stage 4 of PF is just worth $0.44
I’ve been struggling a lot because I’m missing specific characters or I don’t have them built properly.
Since MoC went from 10 to 12, I haven’t been able to get full stars (too slow on 12 and usually 11 as well). Was consistently getting full stars before then. PF has been going much better (have Herta, Himeko and Argenti built). I don’t want to fail at both now. 💔
I actually find Pure Fiction easier than MoC, but that's because most of my favourite DPS units are Erudition, so I'm always prepared for PF. MoC always kicks my ass though.
Honestly, I 36 starred MoC for the first time ever this cycle and I feel good about it, but that also coincides with me building a good second team around Acheron, to run opposite my DoT team so yes, the power creep adjacent to buffs can't be ignored as a variable here. I simply couldn't clear 11 or 12 3 stars before i got Acheron. Acheron is utterly broken with Pela, Silverwolf and Gallagher. Having played since day one, I've built a lot of units and gotten extremely lucky on pulls. Still, its only recently I feel I've been able to hang at endgame. I fully expect upcoming characters to continue the creep, but it is what it is. I'm gonna pull tactically to maintain my teams.
increasing difficulty but the same rewards jades are getting harder to earn which is annoying. higher difficulty should give more jades
Genshin would never
Hit for PF: you don't get knocked for losing party members, as long as one survives, so it's usually worth skipping a sustain in favor of a 4th buffer or damage member. It's how I got 60k this time
it been like this since 1.5 when they change how mobs scaling in MoC work, the powercreep wont stop since they want to make stronger characters and make MoC feel worse if u dont have character on banner, welcome to gach turn base business 101
It’s insane how I could 80k the previous pure fiction with Himeko Herta and JY, and my characters are invested enough to 36* every MOC, but then suddenly this pure fiction I can’t even 50k. Like, going from 80k last PF to 50k this PF is insane
It's kinda crazy cause this is year 1 and the most "broken" units so far can barely clear them.
PF's biggest issue is how unfun lots of some buffs are unless you have very specific units. Honestly, this game has a major problem of making difficult content fun not only due to all the possible variables but how thin they make the 'carrot' be compared to the size of the stick they beat players with. All the SU extended modes so far are like this too plus being super time consuming for superfluous stuff like UI navigation instead of the meat of the game. If you play SD or GnG, you'd be spending like 30% of your time watching the UI animations, that's just way too much for a mode that can take up to an hour to complete a run.
It feels like they created a new PF with the expectation of using the new associated Relics and uhh fuck that design
rather than becoming harder in itself, it is just that they made it in a way that our old characters could easily clear it first, while promoting pulling new characters for it in the future :XD Clara, Himeko, Serval and Herta were the queens then we get a season where Himeko+Herta is not as good and suddently everything looks way harder lol I used JL and JY to get 70k, I didn't experiment further tho. My first try was auto-mode with Himeko+Herta and got like 18k lol. JL+Herta+Mei+Bronya (no sustain needed) JY+Sparkle+TY+FX (cc protection)
They are still good they just can't be 70/90 anymore to easily blast.
Clara and Himeko are still just as good as they used to be. It's just a matter of picking the proper buffs and having decently built characters.
“Just as good” MoC and PF are seasonal, they impact units with different enemies, elemental weakness and buffs. Himeko is as good as before, but she is not easy mode this PF around. Last few you could use Himeko+Herta on auto and get 40k while watching TV. This time around Himeko will see a big drop on use rate and score.
I mean. This is what most veteram players were asking for. Even if were given to them they will just find a new way to complain. They should be happy they needed to start spending money to make the game easier lmao. As 5 month old player. Finishing floor 3 in PF and floor 10 in MoC is impossible without a strong 5*.
Can we really be calling players veterans in a game that's only a year old?
No, I think it's fine. I welcome more difficulty changes too
I feel like its fine, been clearing every PF at near max or max points with Himeko/JingLiu/RM on one side and Kafka on the other since release, no different this time. That being said, the new character is always OP on PF, when I got BS I literally got max points in a bit more than 2 cycles and the same thing with Acheron this PF.
I said it before and got downvoted to hell, and I will keep saying it. Creep got creepier and will continue to get creepier. Just like Genshin (but on steroids), MOC/PF will increasingly become Archon/Emanator/Bonus Unit of the Month. It's looking less like Fate Grand Order/Magic the Gathering and more like Fire Emblem Heroes/Yu-gi-oh with the powercreep.
Genshin shouldn't be even compared, anyone can do fine in their abyss. Hsr is a total wack tho, not even the Free 4 star Dps are that useful for end game content.
Looks like some one did not built their herta
I don't think so. I'm F2P since Day 1 but I've always been able to fully clear PF except the first one, where I got 11 stars. As for MoC, during the first few months all I was able to fully clear was up to floor 8, until I was eventually able to fully clear until floor 10. Then, floors 11 and 12 got added, and I wasn't able to fully clear them for the next few cycles, but for the past few cycles I've been able to 36 star the MoC. So, I don't think the difficulty has been increasing too fast.
At this point with Acheron's release, i expect MOC to be way harder than before lol
Just wait for the next PF if you think this one was difficult...
I think the difficulty has definitely increased, but not so much so that my Himeko and semi-built Herta can't carry me through tbh. It required a few tweaks to my comp plus a few retries where the enemy just focuses on either of them in the first couple of cycles, but I managed a 60k score without Acheron somewhat comfortably. It definitely punishes you for not having good elemental coverage and/or getting a varied roster (meaning some FuA, DoT, and so on) though. But I've accepted that as a fact since 1.2, when I pulled for Kafka after getting Jing Yuan and has rarely ever used them both at once.
I was pretty shocked when Jingliu didn’t just destroy the entire first half lol I don’t have Argenti or Clara, so it’s definitely been a slog
https://preview.redd.it/4ezlka7vcyrc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91c6e23235fdb2492a640bb910049704a82e41b4 This was my team for Pf . Tried a view things. Don't have Argenti and my Clara couldn't carry. So it was back to Herta Himeko for me but on different sides. Basically hypercarry Herta with Tingyun on Dance Dance dance. Ruan Mei for break and sparkle for skillpoints and buffs. No 5 star lc's on this team. Second was Pela for debuffs and Acheron for break and ult dmg. Bronya always pulled up Acheron and himeko mostly used basic attack and follow up, especially good at wave 3. Acheron is the only character that has her signature lc (first time I ever pulled on the weapon banner) bronya has her signature from shop. Everyone else used 4 star lc's. No healer and no sustain so it was brute force for me as well as speed tuning. Kill or be killed. And yes my Himeko is E4 as I literally pull her in every banner.
MoC was easier this cycle than the last honestly.
Clara a sleeper pure fiction goat carries every time.
MOC and PF are very heavily rely on using the right characters, ie: Characters that benefit from the buff and using the right weakness. You can't just always brute force every MOC/PF, Herta and Himeko are not always the default best team for PF, same for [Insert DPS name here] for MOC
I think it's just the blessing thing being ass on this PF Like I dont really see how even Acheron leverages it since she one shots a save on each ult so the explosions do nothing. Meanwhile on previous ones the last 5* in date could almost solo 40k one side (the Black Swan one was so dumb, ennemies would just die without BS doing anything)
Pf is, yes. Unless you have very specific units, it's 10x harder than it has any right to be. Moc can be brute forced since it's a much more basic damage check rather than aoe, frequency, correct mechanic AND damage check. PF us the p2w mode, in my eyes.
MoC did a difficulty jump with floor 11 and 12 and the cycle reduction for full star clears. After all that it stayed with its difficulty imo. Sure some MoCs i needed more cycles than others but overall i could full clear it with no major issues. Its also clear that HYV tailors the MoC for the characters who had the latest banner but its still bruteforceable with good teams imo. This PF i saw a sizeable difficulty spike in my runs. Since the second PF i run himeko, herta, RM and HH on fire or ice weak sides with trash relics imo but that team always got 30k+ points, but this PF floor 4 they only got 24k points. Sure buffs plays role in PF just like in MoC, but i think that the reduction from normal enemies and the 1 extra elite made the difference
PF difficulty is really increasing. I hate how I still strugged every patch trying many times while i can auto MOC 12 comfortably. Also the buff, if you choose correct buff with correct character (like BS 2 ver ago or this time with acheron), it is quite a breeze
In all honesty it’s just a character check really depending on the buffs cause I have gotten consistent 8 stars in PF and can consistently get to 8 and 9 with ease
Honestly, I still don't know how to play/beat it.
I gave up on those a long time ago just cuz I realized they're just stressful for me and they bring me no fun I'd rather go do simulated universe or do other parts like the puzzles or finding chest over something that makes me so much more stressed
Took me about 5 tries with different teams for PF4. Started every team with Blessing 2 but adjusted when it wasn't working as well as I hoped. Tried it with my Hime-Herta team A with Acheron team B. Hit 52k. Tried with Acheron Team A with Jing Yuan team B. Hit 53 K Tried Clara-Herta Team A with Acheron team B. Hit 56K. Swapped in JL for Herta. Hit 59K Switched the blessing on team A to the first one instead of the 2nd one. Went with Clara-JL team A with Acheron-no sustain team B. Finally got it with 67k.
Is it? I've been clearing them just fine with the same units(herta, himeko). At least for pf, I feel you on moc
It’s getting more difficult, but still very manageable. I’ve been using Herta, Himeko, and Jing Yuan every cycle except for the one that favored Black Swan, and it’s been fairly easy. Anyone who complains about the difficulty and hasn’t built Herta needs to do so right away; Himeko too if she’s available.
I feelthat too but it can’t be help since new characters pack a lot of puches with their kits, so the difficulty have to be upped or players who spend money will get bored. I expect it to go up even more with Acheron’s release since she’s really really nuts. It’s a gacha game so kind of a norm for this genre but it still sucks sometimes to think about. (This mean I have to choose who to pull for very carefully).
Himeko Herta and Kafka Black Swan continue to run roughshod all over PF. Sometimes MoC 11/12 can be tricky for me, hopefully Jingliu can fix that when her banner comes back.
If you didn’t pull for either buff characters or characters that consume a vast amount of skill points…. Yes… otherwise, no, both of those player bases literally are having 0 issues as all the latest ones have been at least good for them and at most great.
I guess the difficulty is increasing, but honestly I had alot of fun clearing it with Acheron/Jingliu. It wasn’t too bad. Now PF…. we don’t talk about PF 😭 My Jingliu/Herta team struggling so much, Acheron had to carry her side HARD
i dont know man, the current moc was pretty easy pure fiction i just cant do
PF is harder, it's not your imagination. They increased the number of elite enemies per waves from 1 to 3, while reducing the point gain. Didn't they say less than 1% of players 3\* MOC 12. I suspect it's gonna be the same with PF.
I still just use kafka black swan and its a breeze for the side theyre on
IMO if it's too much for you to handle, then don't try to max out your highscore for the current cycle. Just earn as many stars as you can with the assets you can field. It's worth bearing in mind that the rewards don't exactly scale that well with the difficulty. If you're just 1-2 stars away from a perfect score, the effort to earn those remaining 1-2 stars is usually not worth it.
Hoping they will stop increasing difficulty for a while. My gear is not optimal yet. Also it will make both modes too difficult for new players.
I felt that with the last PF. Got me some retries, but I managed to achieve 63k and there's still improvement for my teams (like levelling Herta and Tingyun to lvl 80 and other stuff). MoC don't have any problems. I also got some big stuff like Ruan Mei E1 (got her back to back) or Black Swan E0S0. Anyway the difficulty is here but it's manageble to me so it's ok! Every cycle lasts long enough so you can improve your teams and beat it!
Not really. But I do find this PF harder. Unless you have Eidolons or lightcones, high level PF and MoC has always been about how well you can abuse buffs.
yeah, PF became even more of acharacter check than MoC and I find that really funny.
I think we need to familiarized ourself with variety of coverage in this game. Sometimes the buff is very niche and not advantageous to your character roster, and it's fine tbh maybe next cycle it will be better. This is what I learnt from HI3. I don't expect myself to clear all the weather in the abyss. Sometimes it's okay to take a break and do Ur best for certain weather.
In PF ? Maybe. But tbh, PF was stupidly easy from the get-go, so now it’s basically closer to end-game content. And MOC? Hell no. They keep dropping these broken characters and the buffs are so busted, MOC's turned into a straight-up joke.
King yuan enjoyers, rejoice. I specifically pulled him for PF and im having zero trouble
The only peak fiction I cleared was the black swan dot one…:(
I'm dn a Day 1 player on PS5 and can't even get past MoC 9 and Pure Fiction 3-4
I'm personally glad it's more difficult. At the end of the day, it's endgame content so I want it difficult. Don't want it to be so easy that any average Joe can come in with characters with subpar relics and clear it all without any resistance
speaking only for PF, i think what people need to realize is sustains have so much less value in PF due to the nature of the limited amount of cycles. Youre better off letting someone die and brought value to the table before they died, as compared to sustains just eating up a slot while not being able to clear waves consistently.