Genshin Impact

If you got Mona as your first 5-star, then it means you're likely tempted to farm mats from the Oceanid again and again from now on. Surprisingly, the Oceanid and her gimmicks were the main topic of this thread a few pages back.

Nice Mona is among the best 5* you can get spooked by along with Jean, others either have been powercreeped (Diluc, Keqing) or were never good (Qiqi).

Before you haven't completed the Inazuma story arc you can't enter it by sea, you will get blown away by the thunderstorm around it eventually.

Edited by Kiefen on Sep 23rd 2022 at 10:31:52 AM

Mona was my first too, and I still get a ton of use out of her to this day. Great for hydro application and her ult gives a decent damage buff, both of which are things a lot of teams need.

Electro's synergy with Dendro in 3.0 did at least give Keqing some extra viability. Can't really say the same for Diluc or Qiqi, though.

Edited by Minus0 on Sep 23rd 2022 at 3:56:46 AM

Keqing got better, but I'd say she rose to Diluc's equal rather than surpassing him. Dendro finally gave her a consistent no-drawback reaction to use, but Diluc still has vaporize and melt. But Diluc has half a dozen decent appliers for hydro and cryo, while Keqing only has the Dendro Traveler (sorry Collei, you're so-so). Hopefully that will change in 3.2.

Keqing's only edge over Diluc is she's got a movement skill for exploration.

Keqing still suffers massively for attacking way too fast with small hits for the ICD on reactions to keep up which wrecks her even with Dendro.

And Diluc has way less options for good claymores compared to Keqing having Jade Cutter, Mistsplitter, etc. Which means it's highly likely he'll get something better than Wolf's Gravestone.

My understanding is that the reactions frequently procing on so many of her weaker hits is actually why it helps her out, due to the fact that aggravate is an instance of flat dmg ala Shenhe's quill buff. In other words, it scales with crit and elemental damage bonus similar to an amping reaction like melt, vaporize, etc., but unlike those, doesn't actually scale with attack, the talent level, or the actual damage of the ability itself. Whether it's a poke from her normal attack or the final slash of her burst, the overall damage aggravate adds to it will be the same (which kind of makes sense for balance purposes, otherwise Raiden's Q would be waaaay more of a Game-Breaker than it already is). What that amounts to is that at the end of the day, characters which are able to proc aggravate the most frequently are actually the ones that gain the most from it. Fischl and Yae (actually, given her partial EM scaling, especially Yae) are in the same boat for similar reasons.

But at the same time, the lack of a decent dendro applicator does indeed make her rotations pretty awkward. Nice thing is, dendro does at least stick around after aggravate has been triggered unlike its cousins melt and vaporize, so she probably doesn't need something on the level of, say, a dendro Xingqiu. Still, a character that's either able to provide better off field application or one that can offer something other than just applying dendro - say either healing or some sort of damage buff - would be a big help.

EDIT: Speaking of which, I think the Game Breaker page for Genshin might have this wrong. Aggravate and spread aren't amping reactions. The 1.15 and 1.25 multipliers are just for the Flat DMG piece, not the whole attack. See this page for more details: https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Damage

Edited by Minus0 on Sep 24th 2022 at 12:48:56 PM

Nice to see there are some subtleties to the gameplay I have yet to explore.

Catalyze for all intents and purposes acts like an amplifying reaction (in that it can have critical hits). While there are subtle changes in how the damage is calculated, the main difference between Spread/Aggrevate and Melt/Vape is that Spread/Aggrevate don't consume the Quicken aura so you can trigger the reaction multiple times without having to reapply the partner element. This is likely why the boost is smaller.

Although Spread/Aggrevate are still subject to reaction ICD's.

Edited by Stage7-4 on Sep 24th 2022 at 11:12:08 AM

So... it's weird since there is a bit more to it than that. Spread / aggravate applies pure Flat DMG, and as such, is kind of in this weird middle ground between transformative reactions like swirl, electro-charged and overloaded and amping reactions like melt and vaporize. But in practice it ends up playing pretty differently to either, even considering the whole aura bit. The fact that Flat DMG is easily one of the most esoteric things in the game that really only saw use with Shenhe's quills doesn't really help matters either. So here are some calculations, courtesy of Genshin Optimizer's damage calculator, which uses the formula and can maybe better illustrate what's going on. Here we go!

Without aggravate, assuming she crits, Keqing's electro damage with my current setup is as follows for two different attacks:

E (stiletto): 4326.1 Ult (final slash): 16207

When she crits and procs aggravate with these, this becomes:

E (stiletto): 8715.1 Ult (final slash): 20596

But note that the difference in bonus damage the aggravate reaction adds in each case:

E (stiletto): 8715.1 - 4326.1 = 4389 Ult (final slash): 20596 - 16207 = 4389

Is the same despite the initial damage differences, unlike how amping reactions work and similar to how swirl, electrocharged, and overload work. Unlike those, however, it being Flat DMG means that aggravate does crit and is affected by elemental damage bonuses. In the case above, if Keqing hadn't crit in each case, the bonus damage aggravate adds would instead be:

E (stiletto): 2932.2 - 1455.7 = 1476.5 Ult (final slash): 6929.5 - 5453.0 = 1476.5

So aggravate is like transformative reactions in that it doesn't care about the damage of the attack itself and doesn't really multiply it in any way (thus, if you want to maximize your damage, it's more important to get as many aggravates off ICD as possible rather than hit as hard as possible every time you proc it) but is like amping reactions in that it benefits from crit and elemental dmg bonus, as mentioned. But there's enough to it that I think it is more of its own thing rather than really fitting into either category imo.

Edited by Minus0 on Sep 24th 2022 at 4:41:04 AM

Okay, I tried the Oceanid again and… well, it wasn’t that hard in the end. I mean, eating strengthening dishes before the fight certainly helped but my DT/Kaeya/Yanfei/Lisa team did the job.

I did the Xingqiu quest with Chang the Ninth, a nice little insight into that character I unlocked by sheer luck. That scene of Lumine playing tough and *gasp* having an expression on her face was pretty funny. Though you gotta wonder why the mogul didn’t simply… buy a lapis heart in the city or go fetch one in the mines instead of harrasing a poor guy at the other end of the goddamn country? I would get it if Chang was the only one who had a lapis heart but they clearly say that it’s super easy to find, so that whole plot was a bit farfetched.

…Speaking of characters, turns out there are a whole bunch of unlockable character quests outside of events, so that’s cool.

And now I’m at level… damn, 29, so almost at world level 3 already.

Remember to grab your free Collei before the event ends this Wednesday.

Not sure I can reach lvl 35 by then…

You can use quick start to enter the event early, in which case you just need AR 20 and to have completed the Mondstadt archon quest chapter. Thankfully, Collei can be snagged pretty much right at the beginning of the event.

This, events that feature characters which you canonical get to know during a different quest recommend you to do these first but they recently introduced a "quick start" button to just allow people to do these quests out of order.

For Collei it doesn't really matter, she mostly just says "Oh hi Traveler" like she already knows you and then you already get her.

For Collei come patch day she will be available on floor 4 of the Abyss. She is essentially required for Sumeru Puzzles but worse than the Dendro Traveler for combat so think of her like Geo Traveler.

Those of us who got her in the event will be able to get a constellation for Collei patch day.

She's also required because she's a pure cinnamon roll whose presence can brighten any day.

Huh, you’re right… It is pretty weird to have characters pretend they know each other before they’ve canonically met, so hopefully it’s the only time I’ll have to do that. >.>

Also, good GOD Port Ormos’ soundtrack is incredible.

Alright, finally meeting Zhongli!

Now let’s go buy rocks. And flowers. And make perfume. And buy kites. And find a coco-goat. And buy incen−Okay, can SOMETHING happen now, please?

Aaand I reached AR 30, where the World Level increases automatically this time. Woops.

Get used to this. A lot of Liyue's archon quests and a fair amount of the characters quests are "go here, talk to this shopkeeper, go there, talk to that shopkeeper, suddenly something strange happens... back to talking to shopkeepers."

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 25th 2022 at 11:05:59 AM

Yeah, uh, welcome to the pacing of Genshin Impact...

Liyue backloads it's interesting moments a shitton. A bit too much, I remember feeling whiplash when it was over.

Meanwhile I just finished Tighnari's story quest, geez I didn't expect to cry in that cutscene. I wonder if they're gonna do anything with Karkata in the future, unlike Ruu it shouldn't to carry him around especially after we rebel against the Akademiya

It's particularly pronounced in Liyue, as a lot of Liyue's quests are centralized in Liyue Harbor - keeping much of its action in that location moreso than any other region emphasizes their cities in comparison.

Also, Liyue has lots - lots - of exposition, about everything to do with the city down to some frustratingly mandatory small levels of detail. As the game's China analogue, Mihoyo wants you the player to know absolutely everything about it, and it shows.

They eventually stopped doing it (or at least, started either spreading the stories out, keeping the mandatory exposition focused on things the player is actually engaging, or - when limiting the players engagement to a single city - doing it better, the latest archon quest being a good example), but it can get very grating when you first arrive in Liyue and start doing the archon and character quests.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 25th 2022 at 11:17:03 AM

Yeah, I remember that too. Starts with an off-kilter fantasy travelling, ends with copious amounts of action and sakuga with a country-level threat. And then back to normalcy with the rest of the populace hardly reacting to the insane madness that happened.

Edited by erazor0707 on Sep 25th 2022 at 1:43:52 PM

I didn't really mind the pacing of Genshin Impact's story, since I still got to meet most of the characters in Liyue through just the Archon Quest. The bit about the Cocogoat is, in my opinion, the quest's number #2 moment after the final segment.