Are "Redundant" Characters Good Or Bad For Genshin Impact? 

You (probably) didn’t pull for Al haitham because you thought he was just dendro keqinq. I didn’t pull for Al haitham because I was saving for Yelan and aqua simulacra banners. We are not the same.

Alhaitham's gameplay from outside may look like he's dendro kequig but in actual gameplay he's more similar to Childe than Kequig.

Video Idea: How Good are the Event Weapons in Genshin Impact

The one “comparison” I can’t understand is Ayaka and Ganyu. The main difference is Ayaka is close range and Ganyu is far and there’s nothing that’s similar to them besides great cryo damage.

After playing alhaitham, he feels nothing like Keqing If there is any character close, it's Childe

I don't think redundant is a word that applies to Genshin at the moment, even though there are somewhat overlaps, characters are all pretty unique and I'm not defending hoyo at all, but I think they do a great job at distinguishing characters

speaking of keqing, it would be cool if you revisited keqing and how her power level changed with the release of dendro. cuz she's not s tier, but her teams like fischl, nahida, and kazuha or some variation of that are pretty strong and she's arguably closer in power level to units like wanderer, cyno, and itto than she was before. idk, it seems like a cool idea to explore how she's changed

As a Cyno main, seeing you not hitting his E when the eye appears physically hurts me

Haven't actually finished the video but I have always been a defender of Alhaitham not being dendro Keqing. His animations are similar although I think the burst is honestly not that similar its mostly the skill. However besides animations they play entirely differently. Alhaitham's damage is like 90% his mirrors and his playstyle requires you to constantly manage and time the different ways of obtaining mirrors for maximum uptime and damage. He's honestly plays more like Childe then like Keqing imo.

A Chongyun for every element actually feels more natural than redundant.

He took the Dendro Keqing meme to heart, he literally made a 14 min video talking about the comparison between Keqing and Alhaitham

I think the biggest positive factor towards character redundancy is very simple: Not everyone will pull every character. For new players, having multiple characters that are similar allows for new players to have a higher chance of getting a character like that. There's a very real chance that new players are getting Yelan on her rerun right now before ever having Xingqiu. This is a good possibility imo.

I’m amazed no one ever brings up Ganyu and Tighnari. Tighnari feels like Ganyu on speed and with dendro element

6:40 Surely they'll start including enemies that are weak against specific weapons in regular gameplay. They already have weak points for bows, increased effectiveness for claymores against shields, and enemies listed with weapon weaknesses for weekly missions.

I don't buy the comparison to Keqing, and it's not just because of their power level. Alhaitham functions distinctly different to Keqing in almost every way: 1) Skill and burst cooldowns are very long compared to Keqing, which highly incentivizes him being played on-field vs Keqing who is much more flexible and functional in a rapid quick-swap team with her short cooldowns and low cost burst. 2) By nature of having high sustained dendro application from a combination of his mirror attacks + NAs/CAs, he can adequately fulfil the role of a dendro driver in quickbloom/hyperbloom/burgeon/Nilou bloom teams on top of quicken/spread teams, while Keqing is pretty much married to aggravate teams due to her high amounts of electro application in short bursts of damage. 3) His dendro infusion isn't actually tied to his E, it's tied to his mirror stacks. You can get them by using his burst which can give you 3 if you have 0 stacks, his skill which gives 2 if you have 0 stacks and 1 if you already have stacks, charged attacking and plunge attacking which both gives 1 stack. Due to this, the way you play him is very formulaic and requires more precise timings on his ability usages compared to Keqing whose electro application is directly tied to either her skill or the application you get from her burst. This also means that there are multiple ways to take advantage of his entire kit and isn't solely dependent on his burst for high AoE elemental application unlike Keqing. I'm skeptical of those who actually think they are remotely similar outside of visual similarities. As many have pointed out, his similarities are more comparable to Childe in terms of function if anything.

Not really redundant though. Xingqui and Yelan are dramatically closer to each other, but I would still argue even they are not redundant.

In Honkai impact they do a wonderful job for weapons being only slotholder and characters using so different attacks. Like Heizou in Genshin. They can do it if they want. Keqing is one of the few characters I don't have but got Alhaitham and he is so much fun and really strong.

imagine focalors being hydro but also can cc, might be the most broken hydro character. i also can see mihoyo doing that

Keqing and Alhaitham only shares similar animations, when it comes to gameplay (as a lot of people has commented) he's more akin to Childe, a more forgiving version of Childe that is both require micromanagement to a certain degree (Childe's CD and Haitham's Mirror) but Childe's consequences are a lot more brutal when you fail to do so as he lose all DPS from failing to manage his melee form while Haitham's can still supplement mirrors from his burst and charge/plunging attacks at least until his skill is back on

NGL, if they give me more Heizou like characters, I'd love it.

he feels a lot more like playing childe than keqing. his abilities are similar to keqing but his playstyle is very different

AlHaitham feels better to me because he feels more rhythmic. I personally like characters who use all of their talents and can make them flow within one another

If done in moderation, I think these kinds of characters could make the game better overall. A pyro Xingqui would be very appreciated.

Characters that serve similar functions in a team are fine, specially if they do not have similar aesthetics design wise and story wise. Genshin has a very big playerbase, so not everyone share the same likes or dislikes. You have players that likes male characters, some want the adult looking female characters, or some want their team to be mostly from Liyue, and some wants their team to be all from Inazuma etc. Having variety to choose from is great, as long as it is not a 1:1 copy then it's fine. I'm sure a lot of people has that one character that they really like how they play but dislike the character itself. If they created a "copy" of that character's kit on a character that suites their taste then that's nothing but a big W.

What I'd love is in an alternate universe having an anemo Noelle...Noelle is already amazing, giving her swirl infusion similar to high constellation Kazuha or something would make her epic (just had the idea since she initially wanted an anemo vision to begin with)

Atleast only their gameplay looks similar. Yelan literally looks like genderbent adult Xingque, even their barber gave them the same haircut.

What is this Haitham is Keqing clownery again. They don't play the same at all.

one thing i think was neglected to mention here is how much a character’s element does actually inform how they play. eg. hoyoverse never would have made xiao a pyro character since xiao’s kit with his mid air dashes and increased jump height is obviously tailor made for the element of anemo. although the theme of light for alhaitham’s kit seems an odd choice for dendro… i still think it’s unlikely we’ll see many more element swap versions of characters for the reason that hyv seems to want to keep the elements unique in flavor.

I didn't even watch the video but if this is really some comparison between Alhaitham and Keqing (based on the thumbnail) it's hilarious, lol They're not redundant since they play completely differently, Keqing is way more quickswap-ish while Alhaitham really wants to sit on field for 12 seconds, not to mention he has the mirror mechanics that interact with his infusion and burst Visually? Yes, they look similar, which is why some people joke about him being "Dendro Keqing" (even though some people are serious and that's sad, pure ignorance), but try playing Alhaitham in the same way you play Keqing and you're in for a bad time my dude

Look like keqing But after testing him in Randomly I realized he was Dendro Childe.

Comparing or even hinting at Alhaitham =keqing is a war crime lmao

I used to be a keqing main before I got xiao so alhaitham being similar to keqing but with a fresh playstyle is exactly what hat I wanted for a new main (well secondary to xiao)

99% of the people complaining about characters being similar in their animations or their kit won‘t pull for every character regardless. I don‘t see how it is bad for them if it‘s just an easy skip because that character isn‘t useful to them. They could just safe up better for a more necessary character and not complain about everything hoyo adds

Redundancy isn't an excuse for mihoyo (for now) because there's lots of roles the aren't fulfilled or that are very scare like off field pyro or physical buffer

alhaitham and keqing had pretty similar-looking abilities visually so I can at least understand where that part of the comparison comes from; but to say he's just as strong or plays exactly the same as keqing back when he wasn't released yet or even before we've seen any leaked gameplay of him in a full team rotation was just plain dumb. also there's only so much variety in animations within games with a huge ever-expanding roster and there are bound to be overlaps in not just animation but also function.

I would say some other gacha that have some pretty good characters to pull for is Honkai, also made by Hoyoverse, If you enjoyed the story of the game you pretty much wanted to summon for every single character, principally 1 to 2 years ago, since they were literally the same 7 characters in other outfits, with some exceptions, that changed because of progress in the story, it still does it to this day, with a cast a little bigger, for exemple, right now, the main trio is just receiving f#cking amazing new battlesuits, because of a major point in the story, and most of the fandom is hyped up for them. By now I feel that is just the style Hoyoverse took in their games, I believe even ggz had pretty good characters, as long as you knew chinese, japanese or played like half the game by what was nearly google translator levels of localization before it became better.

Man I just love all the music choices for vars videos. Don't get me wrong love the videos as well we fun,and informational, but God the music that shows up oddly makes sense for whatever the video may be about. Side note road taken is a really good fates song though all of fates ost is amazing

Klee should have been fire xingqiu, don't think anyone would complain if that happened. Very likely that people would grovel for more changes though

I think that even overlapping play styles make any character redundant. Even small differences can change how a character fits into a team and sometimes having two of a very similar characters is good bc I can’t clear abyss without kokomi and Barbra

Personality wise, they're the complete opposites of each other. Keqing is an obsessive workaholic who min maxes everything for the sake of her ambition and has to be told to take a break and enjoy the view once in a while. Alhaitham on the other is brilliant but lazy and can't be bothered to give anything but the bare minimum for a comfy job. However, when the chips are down and his comfy life is at stake, he gives it his all. And then promptly goes back to not giving a f*ck.

I have to appreciate the Road Taken choice of BGM, nice to see it being implemented in other, more popular media

"There are plenty of videos comparing Al-Haitham and Keqing's performance in combat" The video: AL-HAITHAM AND KEQING RAP BATTLE

If anything playing him felt to me like playing Diluc and Ayato. Mostly simple, very reliable & almost always elementary infused, but also I could see myself getting him to 90 and then shelving him for more interesting units unless I wanted to speed through something as quickly as possible & needed dendro to do so. I decided to skip him not because he's a bad character (he's great!), but because I'm already happy with Tignhari for his unique & fun playstyle and I feel like I would not use Tignhari as much at all if I got and leveled up Al Haithem. But I'm also not opposed to maybe getting him on a rerun. I'm glad I held out because Yelan finally came out again and after many months since her release I am so happy to finally have gotten her. I ended up skipping her so many times cause I didn't have enough primos or I impuse got someone else just before her (no regrets, my impulse & accidental gets were worth it) so yeah I finally have Yelan :)))

Alhaitham isn't even Dendro Keqing, lol. Even if he was, it's funny that people think that would be a bad thing since Keqing is actually really good now with Dendro.

Having overlapping/similar characters is also great because players who come in later or skip can still have the gameplay feel of a character even though their banner may take forever to come back around. Trust me, we get a character like Kazuha in Geo? Trust me I’m pulling them 199%

What‘s the BG music playing during the video? I currently can‘t place it between fire emblem and plants vs zombies for some reason LOL I *think* it‘s FE tho…

It's not that it's redundant, it's just that the most mechanically interesting/distinguish and OP characters reserved only for Liyue lmao.

1:41 NOT THE RAP BATTLE BRUH

I've heard Baizhu is going to have skill like Layla and a burst like Yelan's. I'm okay with it because Dendro brings so much to the table. Look at Alhaitham, despite being called Dendro Keqing, he has more to offer than Keqing because of Dendro.

12:15 Pls, where does that come from? Source?

Where do u get ur background ost 0:53 I wanna listen to it in my spare time

Imagine a world where dehya was just a better diluc…. How much happier we’d all be….

They would break their servers with overwhelm if there ever came out a Pyro Xingqiu haha. Pretty much everybody would pull for them

I remember saying that in one of your previous videos. I really think that characters variety would be a great addition to Genshin. Specially because its a casual game. Many people pull for characters because they like, or if its gameplay, or design, or even the characters lore/ background So yes, having Pyro/ cryo/ dendro or whatever element version of Xinq would be nice. Yelan is there to proof it Even tho they're very similar, those who doesnt like Xiqng can use her instead. Or even use them both together. But each of them still carry their own unique pros and cons, plus their own lore and characteristics. Same for Layla and Diona. Both Cryo Shielder, that got the same funcion. But Diona can be considered a lot better because of the Heal and buffs she can provide. But those who doesn't like diona, can just enjoy Layla as a shielder instead of diona without causing any trouble. Or even so, for abyys, you can add one of them to each floor. See? No problem at all having characters variety You can also say that Tignaris playstyle got some inspiration from Ganyus charged shot. Yes, they're different, but those who like Ganyu may also enjoy Tignaris gameplay. Or again, Ayaka being cryo x Ganyu being cryo and both DPS with completely different playstyles Those who enjoy ayaka more, go for her, while those who likes ganyu more, go for ganyu instead. Or even so, get them both and use in abyss. Also, theres no problem at all with this. So yes, characters variety to Genshin is pretty welcome. As long as they get slightly changes, like thosr exemples i mentioned. ~ characters design, personality, lore etc etc

as someone who thought alhaitham was dendro keqing.. i was gravely mistaken after maining him. his attack combo strings are very different to keqing's since keqing doesnt have 3 mirror management or stack management. if anything, only his burst and skill animations have slightly similar animation, but their combos and playstyles are very different since alhaitham doesnt do charged atk spam and actually does n4d or n4e or n4c as well

Al Haitham is pretty broken ngl, even barely built he still deals big damage if you make use of his quick dendro application. My friend with a better Alhaitham than me melted Azdaha, other bosses together with Yae while I did nothing (my specialty)

3:24 i appreciated that

I think if they're gonna have characters with the same or similar platstyles, they should first do it for different elements. So that way they still feel like they have their own different use applications.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were for each element a character that uses skill and burst similar to the hypostases. Like sucrose it resembles the anemo hypostasis.

Road Taken playing in the background

Connection to wolves? Cyno is a JACKAL. These people need to up their complaints

Yea if I don't like em it gives me time to save for the next one I do want or an extra character to make up a similar team

I pulled on staff of homa banner and got Aquilla. Is this good for Childe?

there's 2 reasons i do not enjoy this topic. 1) al and keqing are not redundant in the way people mean (more on that later) purely because theyre different elements. theyre not encroaching on the exact same niche spot anyway. the actual redundants would be the likes of yelan/xingqui or noelle/itto 2) and i thought this had already been established with actual redundants, having more than 1 of the same character is good for the battle content genshin puts out because youre prime unit in certain comps isn't locked to one team with mediocre/not workable replacements. you can run xingqui with hu tao and your second team won't suffer because you have yelan. back to the redundancy and how people mean it though, a lot of the redundancies they mean aren't even what they mean anyway. and its really just because people don't understand certain mechanics and playstyles that they even put some of them together as redundancies. like ganyu and ayaka, or diluc, yoimiya, and hu tao. worst ive seen is people trying to say that of fischl and sara

I think it'd be a great idea to give certain boosts to specific weapons or characters as long as it's not too restrictive. I feel it would definitely give more incentive to level most of your roster. Also a hydro Sucrose sounds nuts.

1- Alhaitan does look like Keqing but they feel different, he feels closer to Childe playstyle. 2- You need to check Keqing post dendro, she is in some cases better than limited 5* options. 3- This is one of the few cases where people will feel like theres redundancy, just because they work with the same reactions, if we were to get let's say pyro XQ it would feel different just because it would be better with melt instead of vapes. 4- Kokomi is almost a 1:1 copy of Barbara and yet she doesn't feel the same, call it the 5* vs 4* difference or the fact that she has off field AoE app, Eula/Razor, Yae/Fischl, Cyno/Razor, Yelan/XQ, Jean/Sayu, there are a lot of kits that may look and have a similar objective but Hoyoverse manages to make them feel different and boy do I feel weird praising that shit company (like the game but Hoyoverse sucks).

"None of the Dendro Characters released prior to AlHaitham can achieve Spread as often as he can..." Nahida with no ICD on her E: ._.

What’s the song that plays in the background?

redundant characters are neither good nor bad, they're merely inevitable. The longer a game lasts, the more redundant characters will pop up simply because there are only so many ways you can stab someone with a sword or shoot someone with a bow. Like, when Nilou came out for most people it was never a case of "if" we would receive a dendro healer, it was "when" we would receive a dendro healer. Lo and behold, we get Yaoyao. They seem to be expending at least some effort in keeping the Archons unique at least, with only Venti having any true redundancies (and he was a launch character so that's understandable) but we're only at 4 out of 7 (or 8...) so that could change. It's especially something that's going to crop up once we finally get all the weapon+element combos.

Hopefully the characters in Fontaine will add an interesting new gameplay style with devices that help deal extra damage in combat or something.

May I have the name of the background music ?

Personally, I'd be really interested in an Electro, Dendro, Hydro or Cryo type Yoimiya. Long distance, rapid-fire quicken based reactions or being able to freeze without having to get too close would be interesting. Aloy may already exist but, unfortunately, she requires extra steps to get that infusion & it isn't always reliable. Anemo could be interesting too, in this regard, provided some sort of aoe on hit.

i think that redundancy ((sorry english aint my first langugage) might good in a way taht if 2 character are similar,some people might prefer the design of one over another,for exemple itto and noel:botha re the same principle but their design are different so some people migth rpefer itto's design over noel's and so on

I like it coz it gives us players the option to pick the characters we want to use. I have Keqing but I never built her coz I only like tall characters. When Alhaitham got leaked showing his skill similarities to Keqing I was excited coz I absolutely love Keqing's kit due to it's fast animation and fast mobility. Another character which I am happy to have a tall version is Xingqiu through Yelan. Now I'm waiting for a tall version of Xiangling so I can fully enjoy Tartaglia.

Robin with Elwind: “Ah yes, my arching sword recovery move.”

I think its cool as long as its different elements or if same an upgrade of a 4 star version ie Noelle - Itto , Barbara- Kokomi

Another interesting topic for a video topic that other comments here reminded me of: the differences in how hard a given character's kit/rotations are to master. Because with characters like Tartaglia and Alhaitham, that's way more important - and difficult - than it is with Noelle or even Nahida.

This one of the things I notice a lot in genshin one of the reasons I didn’t go for someone like alheitham is that(I now they are different characters but humor me a little) is because I had Tighnari while yes they have team preferences and unique playstyles My thing is I don’t need 2 spread dps units plus I was saving for the next update hoping it’s a shenhe rerun. Would have it been nice to get him,absolutely the more 5 stars the better! But was he needed no he would have been redundant to have on my account

8:38 ask and you shall receive

I think similar characters in terms of play style are fine although maybe not the same or similar element (as in dendro is involved with electro a lot and vise versa) there is still a lot of room for new and innovative characters a few milidly redundant characters isn’t bad in my eyes, tbh part of the reason I burned most of my f2p primo sources getting Alhaitham was because I loved playing kequing in events but don’t have her. Redundancy makes there be more than one option to access a certain play style and as long as there an different element and have a different gimmick I think it’s cool and makes it so you don’t have to put everything into one character to access a playstyle

Well, I've got both, and just through pity pulls alone I managed to C6 Keqing; having never once had a desire to use her, lol. Honestly, what trips me up is just how much more time consuming gathering the regional items have been for character ascension. It's like each region has 40 of something and they get more and more spread out as you get to each region. It's to the point where Sumeru feels like any one regional material is in a pocket of 2 or 3 spread across the entire region and near no waypoint, lol.

Now that I think of it, Mona is kinda like a hydro Sucrose: 1. (Short) off-field application 2. Buffs 3. Crowd control (she actually keeps them in place, but even Sucrose doesn't do much for crowd control, besides slightly pulling them with her skill and stunning them with her burst like Mona, but doing it 3 times more).

I know you don't play Destiny 2 but with the reveal of the Lightfall subclasses, the Titan subclass seems very familiar to Arc and Stasis, in the form of running into enemies by using your fists but in a different color. Also there are exotics in the game that can do very similar things to each other.

Love Alhaitham. So glad I have him. He does plenty of damage and he is so fun. Also have had Keqing for a long time. Never use her. Alhaitham is my main main. The “dendro Keqing” is a silly saying and people just like to copy other people. Utterly risible…

i was never actually worried about how he plays or whether his kit was similar to keqing's, i just thought his animations were too similar to another character's (the eula diving her sword into the ground comes to mind). aka my concerns were always "are we out of original attack animations already?" rather than how it actually works. though since hes come out i dont think thats case anymore. def something to think about tho!

i'm looking forward to see the next non Elettro elemental skill counter beidhou like.

I’m sure HoYo wants to mix in ‘redundant’ characters now so that down the line there are still new element+weapon+playstyle combinations even when we get to Snezhnaya (and honestly I suspect the story will keep going far beyond the ‘Teyvat Chapter’, simply because I can’t imagine HoYo abandoning this game). Imagine if we already had a character for every single combination, we could never get a new character that’s entirely unique.

0:36 Wait what the?! How did you use Traveller ES with almost no cool down?

I woukd like to correct the claim that Keqing and Alhaitham have the same normal attack skill thing. Alhaitham has a larger range when he hits with the leaf whatever things.

I should make an online course on how to pad essays. Having trouble meeting that pesky word count? LOOK NO FURTHER! For only ???$ a lesson, YOU TOO can make anime filler episodes :D

My reasoning for not wanting to pull him because I wanted yelan and I didn't want to go out my way to get access to his boss drops. I'm taking my time unlocking Sumeru slowly to savor it. Like why would I take the time to go discover his boss where say yelan i can easily know where to and how to farm for her faster.

I think they're fine. Very few people will want or like every character. So even if some characters are very similar, everyone has the chance to get a character they like. Even if you like one you might not like the other, whether that's because of a slight difference in playstyle, how they look, or their lore. So I think it's good that people have similar options to choose from. Also, you might want two of a character who do similar things. E.g. you might want two crowd control characters like Venti and Kazuha, or you might want two characters you can use off field for a similar purpose, like Xingqiu and Yelan. So having "redundant" characters can make it easier to build teams because you don't have to make as many tough choices about what team certain characters are on.

7:25 *cough* Klee if the developers would let her burst stay on other characters *cough*

Does someone know the name of the outro music???

Now that I think about it, I would love having xiao of other elements

Nice video but the FE Fates music is amazong

we not gonna talk abt how Layla is a 4* Ganyu/Cryo Thoma/Cryo Lisa (her skill is a shield that shoots elemental projectiles like Thoma’s burst & her burst creates a zone where once an enemy enters it, it sends cryo projectiles at said enemy(s) with the turret floating stationary in the dead center of the zone

Anyone know the name of the music in the background? It sounds familiar

Isn't it ket-ching? Where the t sound is shortened?

People got sad simply because they want their character have distinct animations. Having something similar to previous charater visualy make people believe that devs didnt care about character they really love.