Are Tanks Pushing Healers Out Of The Meta? | Honkai: Star Rail 

Welt sustain: I am the META that approaching

The same argument as Shield Vs Healing in Genshin. Both will be eventually patch out with new enemy or character.

The reason that I always run Fu Xuan is literally because that 75% damage reduction is just too good to pass on, it's just so reassuring that the only character that can be one shotted is Fu Xuan and to do it the enemy needs to do an attack that does 8k dmg to her or the enemy does an AoE attack that somehow does 30k dmg, it's just so rare that would happen

This is a perfect example why March 7th is a pretty decent Preservation unit, the only way you can 'prevent' damage enemies is either out-damaging them, slowing/stunning/freezing them in place, or simply putting up a shield. Considering March 7th's element and kit, she already has two of these stages covered, though she does have a cleanse, it requires you to burn through your skill point and even then it's more of a novelty that she has a cleanse in her base kit that can immediately remove pesky debuffs. Having her at E6 even add the point of healing a certain amount of HP, while incredibly small on it's own, it just so happens that her whole kit is all about stalling for time, that's an even better note why she's made to be a solo sustain rather than pairing up with a healer because she has all of the bases covered. Even damage is added into her kit through follow-up attacks, while pretty minuscule on it's own, it makes sure that even at the slightest moment that the enemy is free from stuns and rampaging through your party, you're still dealing damage no matter how small, again for a preservation unit, that's pretty neat. Really, the only problematic thing about her is her incapability to bring out the shields much faster than either Gepard or Aventurine can, she's great for both playing it casually and building it all to defense or a more niche build like freeze-bot.

I feel like it’s way too early to have this discussion tbh, considering that there’s only two limited 5* characters of either archetype and we’re only in 2.0

yeah because you get 1 shot in end game swarm and g&g not moc and pure fiction

I haven't been able to pick qny healer back up after i got Fu Xuan. The difference is huge. As for GnG or other SimU modes, preservation gives you shields multiple times the size of an hp bar while you can't heal a character beyond what their hp bar holds so abundance blessings often feel redundant.

The one problem I have with shield is that the shield wears out quickly if the character has high spd or advance forward.

i dunno im pretty sure they will add a mechanic that can bypass shields at some point

Healing is often intertwined with cleanse, as often as I use master Fu for damage mitigation against one shots, I find it more comfortable to slot in Huohuo when enemies have high debuffing capabilities 👀

I like the timing of this video, considering on the subreddit there was this little debacle where someone couldn't beat the Beetle because they brought Jingliu with Preservation Trailblazer as their only sustain... Needless to say, but each has their purpose.

6:36 the mc clip was genius honestly.

It makes total sense that most of the content right now leans more towards shield units because Aventurine is about to come out so they want you to think that you need to pull for him. Just like how the content was leaning more into debuff cleansing when HuoHuo came out. HSR, just like Genshin, tailors it's content to whoever characters are featured in it's banners. It's just much more apparent in HSR, since characters not only require the right element, but also the right path. I won't be surprised if in the future they will release anti shield enemies just like the wolves in Genshin. And I bet you they will do that when there's a new healer that will release.

For Every Team I make in either Genshin or HSR, I always have a healer, regardless what team I make.

You forgot one thing luocha can do, his ult can remove all buffs on enemies so its useful for taking down specific enemies like the abundance enemies that respawn and heal as well as the fat ipc guy (i forgot its name) who buffs itself if you don't kill the adds

Honestly for Star Rail (unlike Genshin), I barely acknowledge healing vs. Shields. All of the limited 5* and new 4* have additional utility on top of their sustain and I look at that before considering if it’s shields or heals. They all carve out different niches which is the more important factor for me. Team is SP hungry? Bring Luocha. Team is SP hungry or is focusing on break damage? Gallagher. Need crit stats or ailment prevention? Fu Xuan. Crit stats and follow-up synergy? Aventurine. Attack buffs, mega cleanses, or energy? Huohuo. AoE Cleanse or aggro manipulation, OR you need an easier to obtain healer? Lynx. They’re honestly all so different and, among the 5* especially, have competitive sustain that the sustain itself is a bit of a wash except for the 4* who just have a higher team investment requirement to solo sustain.

At this point it's basically depends on taste. Different enemies also a factor whether you should bring a shield or heals. You know they would make an enemy that bypasses shields, like how Sam counter healers (some can still clear with healers though).

Speaking of... one of the things I want to see in a future sustain character is a DoT based Healer. Like, the more DoT debuffs the enemy has, the more they can heal. It may not be exactly the best, but there's a SU blessing like this one. I've always thought that the SU blessings seem to mirror some of the characters' base kits, so there's that...

I don't think so. Hoyo will create problems to sell solutions, and so both Preservation and Abundance won't fall obsolete nor will they just carry every content in the game. If they release a healer, they might introduce enemies who are able to damage through shield and vice versa, like Sam who reduces healing massively, encouraging players to play with shielders instead.

In hsr sustain is very important, but the prblem with healers, except luocha, is that when something can blast through your shield faster than you can prop it back up, it's generally faster than you can heal. Luocha is the only one i've found who can keep up with passive sustain at endgame damage levels, both huo huo and bailu are good for active healing, but their on damage healing is too weak. Luocha can still allow remedial sustain fast enough with his field and the auto heal such that as long as your characters can survive they'll be able to heal back, but the other healers aren't at that level yet. On the other hand, with shielders, you aren't taking any damage to necessitate healing, and if you are, it would probabky wipe you out before you got healing if you used a healer instead because non-tank chars don't generally stack health. If you look at fu xuan, you still need healing elements because your characters still take a percentage of damage, but for other shielders you just ignore damage as long as the shield is up. Personally for me it's luocha on top, then shielders then other healers.

Yes, thank u Gepard for been my first ssr, love u so much

I mean the only times I REALLY needed a shielder was for Swarm and GE difficulty V when I had to use Gepard. Other than that I've been doing MoC just fine with Huohuo on one side and Bailu at the other. Maybe they could take a page or two from Epic Seven by making a healer that reduces AoE damage and has reactive healing when the team suffers from said AoE damage. A lot of possibilities here

Funnily enough, bailu somehow plays both roles of a preservation and a healer. She has damage reduction for all of her teammates with her A6 on top of her invigoration allowing face tanking heavy atks. That dmg reduction really helps me on many plays I have with Swarm and GnG. It is just a bummer that she doesn't have any means to cleanse anyone

I personally have a huge fondness for Gallagher as a healer, especially on teams with a lot of Blast and AOE. To me, he's Clara's second dad, the one who gives her soda to make her feel better while Svarog is busy taking revenge on everyone who hurt her.

2 years later: the rise of healing supports

I've been managing fine regardless of whether my sustain is Fu Xuan or Luocha. Aventurine will be my first shield unit when he's out next week, so I'll see how that works out.

Classic Hoyo, pushes shields right now, especially with Sam boss fight being extremly annoying for healers, just so they can make an enemy that ignores shields and deals true damage few patches later. If you want to get ahead of Hoyo powercreep get both good *healer* and good *tank* .

It just depends on the enemies. Who know they will add an enemy which can just ignore shields , then healers will obviously be better

I feel like abundance characters decreasing in value would only for a short time especially with how much star rail changes its metas. Just like how people went from using Jingliu constantly to not as many people using her currently, a simple change in enemy mechanic or enemy weakness typing easily changes teams and character choices.

I think this is a case were units having hybridized toolkits and the further exploration of the different team archetypes can help the Abundance units. While this also works in favor of the Preservation (ex. Aventurine taking advantage of Follow-Up Attacks), I think having more Abundance characters that dip into other path specializations and mechanics would be a good idea. If there's more Abundance units like Gallagher with debuffs, that would benefit a units like Acheron and Dr. Ratio. Units that want to get hit like Blade can use mitigation and heals, but don't want shields. So hopefully those differences will help Abundance keep pace with Preservation. I like the Abundance Dewdrops in Simulated Universe, so I do think effects that can convert overhealing or provide additional offensive or defensive benefits when healing could go a long way.

I think you’re correct. Thankfully I have Gepard for cases where I need massive damage mitigation.

i personaly still prefer abundence over preservation but i notice somethin in star rail, at the start abundence and hunt were the most "important" path, the it was destruction, then erudition and harmony and now we are going for preservation and nihility , at the star for suport it was better abundence and harmony and now is going for nihility and preservation

12:30 with the debuff meta hsr is going into, i’d really like to see if hoyo would make a sustain outside of preservation and abundance by reducing enemy atk this would sorta be like fu xuan where each hit doesn’t hurt as much but it applies debuffs and everything I doubt this will happen but it’s a funny concept

Getting one shotted in SU hurts

I think the other super important thing to not is crowd control, being imprisoned or entangled will delay ur action and even if a healer can cleanse the debuff they don’t restore the action order so it can really mess up your rotations. Having a unit like fuxuan or aventurine to resist those debuffs is a saving grace

my gepard is too slow and my Kafka is too fast, so my Kafka almost never have her shield

There is a rumor that March 7th will be getting a 5 star version sometime in the future so it’s possible that she could be a power creep to all Sustain in a similar way to Imbibitor Lunae Dan Heng was for DPS at the time. What I could see them doing for 5 Star March 7th is make it so that she has an ult that heals the whole party and any overflow healing is converted into a shield or something like with some extra effects so that excess healing doesn’t feel like a waste.

We're just not having the right contents.if they ever cook up a boss that deals %health dmg or shield penetration ,def ignore,... Then healers will rise again.but right now we got sam who reduces healing,bosses that oneshots your dps.all having good matchup against healers

I think we might see new relics (oof for hunting) that give abundance some new flexibility, some in mind might be: • Gives energy regen or supporty effect based on how much they healed allies (could also buff blade, arlan, and potentially Sam this way) • Gives a buff or stack based on instances of receiving damage (promotes that ebb and flow for HP management) • Gives a new type of buff based on overheal. Temporary max hp? Action forward? Damage reflection based on temp hp lost? I think berserker Destruction + Abundance pairing has a lot of potential with the right guidance. I also think more “Hunt” like enemies can exist. Higher speed, and maybe even ones that have up to half their damage bypass shield on a marked target. I can also see more challenges that are less about clearing asap, with other kinds of objectives like survival. Like damn I just want natasha and bailu to regain some relevance

From my very own personal experience i need to say kinda, although it actually depends on the contents that im doing. My Gepard sustained through the last stages of the Xianzhou's Navis Astrager better than my Luocha and Bailu, but i use Luocha more on a daily basis since how comfortable he is. I guess it boils down to the fact that a shielder can prevent you from being one shotted while a healer can't, but the moment a character gets to low hp and having no shield to protect them a healer would seems more pleasing to have and use. I always used a character that provides shield in other games than those who heals you, like genshin where i pair my Eula with Layla. At the end of the day it comes to our preferences and needs on which one is more needed and better to use for something. Honestly i enjoy shield more but putting Luocha and Gepard together to brute force Swarm Disaster and Gold and Gears is very fun so just use what you enjoy the most

one thing people dont mention huohuo vs luocha is that luocha is SP + while huohuo is SP neutral. still like huohuo more for the ER tho.

what my luocha mainly does most of the time is buff shredding the enemies with his ult with some emergency healing on top

Damn come to think of it, my main teams 1) Mono quantum has Fu in place of a healer, and 2) my Destruction team has Lynx but often times in MoC ill leave lynx out in favor for a buffer because Gepard's sheilds are usually enough to keep everyone alive even with Jinglu's team health drain lol.

my fu xuan and huo huo can comfortably carry my teams from getting one shotted for now, i think. will still try and go for aventurine since i think variation of sustain is nice and they all have something different to offer

i hope it doesnt stay a problem cuz i only have gepard and i love bailu sm😭 i also dont plan on going for fu xuan in upcoming patches so i gotta make do with my gepard n ghallager (also luocha)

The other way healing could win over shields -- and I'm surprised this idea wasn't mentioned -- is if they changed the format we are fighting in As mentioned in the video, the reason preservation is currently winning over abundance because the end game focuses on beating enemies in as few cycles as possible. This means both that the enemies always have to be threatening to one shot you to be challenging, and that fights never take long enough for the benefits of healing to show All it would take is a new game mode with more focus on longer battles to flip this dynamic on it's head. Similar to how Pure Fiction was able play to the strengths of erudition units, a game mode focused on longer more grindy games would be able to exemplify preservation characters' inability to reverse any damage that slips through the shields, and would make abundance characters' potential to sustain indefinitely a necessity.

Fall in love with Fu Xuan , start saving since 1.0 get her at E1S1 never leave my party ever since

because MOST char other than abundance have low health, preservation is much better for the team rather than healer even if we exclude the utility(fx give crit rate, aven give inc crit damage taken, hh give energy regen, etc) that abundance and preservation char give to the team other than sustaining. if we got more high hp char and dps like blade, i think abundance will shine too

Fu xuan has just carried me through so much though I still appreciate healers like lynx and gallagher with their cleanse abilities which fu xuan cannot do

yeah, I always hated healers. The only two sustains I have for now are Fuxuan and Lynx, I could have gotten a 5 star healer but I never trusted them to keep my team alive so I waited until a second 5 star preservation was released. I'll be getting Aventurine when he comes out now.

i feel what made healing just way better in genshin is mainly bcs u can just dodge and with the release of furina someone whos buffs were locked behind healing, so for hsr to do something similar i feel like they would need to release more characters like blade who dont want shields and then someone similar to furina in which buffs are locked behind healing.

The lesson of the day Smoky the bear's advice can go into just about anything

Welt Yang: It's all part of my plan!

They are pretty good. But since i have huo huo with her Lc i really feel that pulling for that was a game changer for my account. But, i still need another 5* sustain for for the second team, and i think i will go for fu xuan

Some way that I can think of to make healing more viable is to make it act like the 3* abundance SU blessing or Bailu LC, converting heals into damage. Shields can also do the same of course by converting shield value into damage. But with shields, taking damage will reduce your shield, hence less damage, unlike heals that are consistent in number (assuming overheals still count)

I was starting to think of this but this mindset only applies in endgame SU. Gepard also is kinda falling behind compared to Fu and Aven that can tank CC debuffs.

Easiest is to add content with enemies that ignore%, remove or quickly break shields. Or add various penalties and debuffs for tanks or all units even, which only removable by healer cleanse. For future healers the overheal mechanics are a must, along with offensive buffs. Also they can use something like purgatory from WoW where if you fatally hit you dont die instantly but have a short window of time to be healed up othewise you die. Also probably healers and tanks will be merged into one category as 'sustain'.

I feel like they addressed this with Huo Huo by giving her harmony like buffs on top of healing. Also relic sets like the healing one and planar sets that increase crit damage for having effect res. Energy and attack increase on top of the best cleanse and heals.

I'm just waiting for the herta abundance light cone, hopefully it just says something like "when your ult heals you cleanse as well" then bailou would probably have a really good standing amongst healers

You raise some good points, but failed to account for how madly in love I am with Huohuo

Powecreep in this game is too much, I was collecting all the characters, now my Seele is useless, even Luocha who was broken now is nothing compared to newer units and it's not even a year

And there is me bring both Gallagher + FX everytime I do gng high conundrum /SD 😅 My FX just keep getting 1 tap by boss I need to secure every revive blessing for the final boss.

This reminded me FF14 discussion I had with FC (guild) members. I asked if they prefer to raid with Shield+Regen Healer or double of one of them. And most people agreed that most stable clears usually happen when there are 2 Shield healers in party. This mostly boiled down to: While Regen healers kit built around healing, usually simple fact of good rotation of damage mitigation plus shields often left party with enough HP they wont even need additional healing (also, Shield healers also have regen skills, tho they are limited by cooldowns). And going back to HSR, usually I play Pres+Abu in SU simply for sake of autoplay while I watch some videos or read something, but recently, when I decided to go for max clear of MoC I met sad truth that Luocha+Clara, while still potent combo, don't provide as much sustain as I'd like to. Because, unlike early stages of HSR these days every second non-elite mobster have some form of AoE or Cleave. Another problem is that a lot of buff/debuff units scale of multiple stats (obv, you'd like they to act as much as possible for extra SP regen, but there are also ATK scale, EHR for debuffs etc), which tends to leave them relatively squishy (I once had my fully built TY oneshot from full by alchemist bitch's aoe). So, yeah. At this point of the game premitigating damage is way better than healing it (unless you fight something like Sam, who goes around Shields and redirection) and I think Mihoyo get a lot of value out of Aventurine banner (judging by lack of news on preservation 4* in near future).

The OHKO or even when just 2 enemy(ies) hits focus on one character is really frustrating! And it’s not hard to happen I will say. That’s why I will be pulling for Huohuo E2 when possible so I don’t depend in THIS rng since there’s too much of it already lol But one thing Abundances still have better than Preservations (to this date) is cleansing

Damn, I always wanted Fu Xuan with her LC. 😔👉👈 Going to use her and Gepard both on SD: G&G. Only problem: I am not guaranteed on both LC and Character Banner. 🙂

If they add a HSR character with a Baizhu kind of kit they would be probably be so broken but they probably wouldn't have much offensive supporting capability or personal dmg

There is a character that increases hp already named lynx for the reason of making said character get targeted more problem is its so tiny and she only heals 1 person per skill while all on burst

I have Fu Xuan and she really carried me for the sustain role. And I'm thinking to get Huohuo next for my 2nd limited sustain, is she still good? Since she's a healer and not shielder. 🤔

Thats because every enemy hits like an icecream truck on LSD by Endgame.

I think it really depends on units rather than their path alone. My first limited 5-star unit is Luocha, and aside from specific scenarios that require shields, so far he's the only sustain I need. The reason I prefer him over anyone else is because he is skill positive. I have been using him for so long that I've mastered the art of sustaining without ever using a skill point on Luocha. Gepard on the other hand, even with ER rope, there are times when the uptime of his shield cannot catch up with stronger bosses. After seeing Aventurine's kit, I think he doesn't have any uptime problem, which proves my point that it's all on the unit's kit and not necessarily their path.

It also doesn't help that there area plethora of blessings and curios in SU that can also heal the party but not nearly as much shielding, making tanks the preferable choice in combination with those blessings even more. A way to make healers more relevant is to have them give a portion of their defense/effect res on heals to the target, let's say 25%.

i wonder if theyll create some enemy move type or status effect that ignores shields, like a sort of poison or something, i dont see why dots dont already ignore shields but thats just IMO theyll have to make sure they're not heavy handed in using it otherwise it will make use of a shield pointless as a result

If you look at a game like FGO that is turn based they will likely do something similar just have skills that allow you to pierce shields or enemy gimmicks that interact with them. They have already made the monkey that hurts itself when you have a shield, there will probably be a more opposite enemy in the future if they feel shields are a problem

They're going to add more dot mechanics, that bypass shields or reduction effects, forcing people to use/get healers or they're going to make the next abundance character's heals give you dmg reduction or shields..

The only time it matters is in Swarm and GnG. You shouldn't be getting one shot in MoC. If you are it's a sign your characters need more relic investment. As well I still don't entirely know why Luocha is being so written off. Pure sp positivity does matter. There are a lot of teams where you just want to always depend on your support gaining sp. The others have to spend it at some point. Aventurine might be fully sp positive, at the least on FuA teams, but that'd have to be seen in practice. My Huohuo is e0 and while she's technically more powerful, it's a bit messy to the point that I only use her on my dot team vs Luocha, Fu Xuan, and Gepard who are all much more sp positive.

A possible change they could add to abundance units to make them on par with preservation units if they start to fall off massively is give them some kind of overheal ability. In essence, if the amount of health healed is over the amount needed to fully restore, you could either transfer the remaining overheal to another adjacent unit (useful for abundance units that only heal one at a time) or you convert the extra recovery into temporary max health (essential raising a unit's max HP during battle temporarily). This is just an idea to throw out there but to be honest I don't think this will be the direction abundance units will take in the future. It's still too early to tell.

In the simulated universe the favor also heavily leans on towards shielding, allowing more survivability than healing due to the absurd damage dealt by the enemy causing them to one shot allies that you can't heal

I don't want to go into leaks territory, but you're mostly right. Future healers will also provide more utility that is designed to work in different teams, same as HuoHuo supporting teams that need atk and ults, future healers sill support hypercarry and fua comps more closely.

Eh I have one or the other on my team and I am usually fine, I am just going based on who I actually want to pull rather then meta or characters the majority think is good. I am playing the way I want to play

i replaced my healer in my simulated universe team with gepard for the 3x farming; and I felt so empowered. i normally have bailu incase I fuck up and someone dies but I decided to put all my faith in shields and I ran a train on cocolia

To me I love the preservation units rather than the abundance ones due to the fact that they make my team feel less squishy. I remember hearing this being discussed, that preservation is good for more short term fights (damage mitigation) and abundance is better for more long term ones (healing/recovery).

Thing is, we already have an example of another avenue for pure healers can take to match shielders: max health buffs. Lynx does that as part of her skill. The concept is already in the game, they just need to give it to someone who can do it better and more easily.

Honestly, considering how much the opposite it felt like at the start, the shift to tanks as meta has been quite a crazy journey

They just need to add more characters like Blade and Jingliu who uses hp for damage.. thats the whope reason healers became good under Furina.. because Furina uses the team hp, regardless of who is on field or not..

It doesn't matter eventually, with star rails light cone system preservation 5 stars will likely need their signature light cone to do their job

at the end game like in gold and gears you can heal if every hit just one shots you. so you need a shield if you are think in surviving.

In my experience, I tend provide healing for Erudition and destruction characters. Sometimes Hunt too, but I like giving them and Nihility characters shields because of how the base stats and priorities end up. Hunt and Nihility always want to die to a strong gust of wind 💀

At the moment we only have two 5-Star Shielders (Fire Traiblazer doesn't count, his shields are made of paper and he's more focused on Taunt) so there's no way to say for sure. As soon as they started to release more Shilders options we will be able to form a more solid opinion

The thing you forgot to mention is : 1. The duration of the shield depend on the unit on your team. So with high SPD team or your unit sacrifices their turn for the DPS unit (bron, sparkle), the 3-turns (shield) run out very quickly. Like try to run Gepard with Seele and Bron or Kafka with 160+ SPD (sig + ruanmei), or even Sparkle + Bron team, Good luck with that. That why Fuxuan can run on every team, the duration of her Matrix depends on her turn, not your unit's turn. The downside is she can't face tank big AOE, DOT or heavy single oftentimes (Aventurine boss). Even the "decreases max HP" in 5:43 eventually counter Fuxuan because of her HP restore talent . And Aventurine beside of his E shield, he also provide shield base on his FuA but that shield is pretty low, only 7,2% of his DEF. You don't want to -1 skill point every 1-2 turn, right? 2. Preservation don't have Cleanse. Sure Fuxuan every time she cast matrix, your team have 1 CC resist and Aventurine give 50% Effect RES, but anything bypass that, then your whole run is delayed by a lot, even ruin your run. And if anything, Fuxuan is the one scared of DOT the most, because she dont have cleanse, every DOT your team take will bite into her HP the most, and every time your unit that have DOT take turn, be sure that your Fuxuan HP gonna drop by at least 5 to 10%. So yea, Preservation don't have anything to Cleanse your DPS or Sp. So, I don't think Tanks Are Pushing Healers Out Of The Meta when the Meta consist of many high SPD units, Bronya and Sparkle and the fact that Preservation dont have Cleanse (except March 7th)

Lets just pray they add clense to Bailu heal or ult

I think on your point of a healer needing to over heal, I can see that happening. Unicorn Overlord has a class that can overheal 50% over the hero's max HP, but even outside of that there could be an abundance character that turns over heal into shields, effectively giving us a abundance/preservation the same way we see Fu Xuan as preservation/harmony or Seele as a hunt/erudition

Yeah, I am just waiting for them to come out with a rifthound type enemy

The probability of making enemies with the effects of "Serpent's Fang" and grievous wounds from league i think could be a decent idea, not the best but not the worst at least.

Tl;dr for what I'm about to say: Hoyo keeps shooting themselves in foot by overtuning certain units, which causes them to have a need to outdo that unit with the next one. Hence the mess. Example: They made Fu Xuan way too overtuned and now they are trying to "blance" things out by giving content that even she might struggle with. The thing with this is, if Fu Xuan herself is having issues with something, than that just hits back harder against healers who can't even remotely sustain as good as her. Take these SU modes as example. If Fu Xuan can't just breeze through these, then a single healer will have even worse time. It's not even just SU modes. I recall lot of people posting and complaining about their units like Kafka or Swan getting one shot by that new monkey in moc. Or Something Unto Death hitting way too hard to the point that its pure rng with healers. Then there is Sam that kind of favors more healers compared to Fu Xuan (which brings us back to how they keep introducing things that in particular are trying to screw Fu over), but you can still get screwed over compared to... just bringing Gepard. Then Sam fight requires zero brain cells and there is no sweat. Which clearly shills someone like Aventurine instead. Sam is the new boss-toy. It's the one you will endure the most in MoC from now on and Sam can be a pain unless you use shields. Technically Luocha was the first to set this very unhealthy standard for future sustains because any sustain past him came to "but can they sustain as much as Luocha does?" Because, even though some forgot these times, Luocha was extremely stupid by sustain standards when he came out. Which came down to Fu Xuan and her becoming more overtuned. Not only can she sustain as well as him (better), but she also gives team-wide CC immunity for 1 debuff, making then annoying boss fights like Kafka a pure breeze, then there is also buffs on top of that. Then Huohuo was about to come out and she had Fu Xuan and Luocha to compete with. Hence change from atk scale to hp scale to make her tankier unlike Luocha, making her old E1 (cleanse) base kit for obvious reasons, increasing her atk buffs from what they were. Which all in total caused someone like Luocha, who used to be a standard for sustains, into becoming the most doomposted and hated character that he is now. Now we got Aventurine who seems to fix the issue that Fu Xuan got which is against aoe and how lack of shields can screw her/her team over (Sam as the best example - Fu will heal, but gl with others because it all comes down to getting rid of Sam fast with Fu in the team since she can't save you). However, he does seem to have issues with ST scenarios from what I saw (if enemy was to target a singular character over and over again during their turn), and I can easily see devs trying to make more content geared toward his weakness to "blance" him out like Fu Xuan, but just like with her... If he ends up at the point in which even he struggles in some content, the rest will be even more screwed. I'm talking solely when it comes to sustaining in these scenarios.

I'm a little torn. I've got Acheron, Clara, and the F2P Ratio, but no Topaz. But on the other hand, I got Kafka and Black Swan. I'm not sure whether I should go for Aventurine, or wait for Huohuo's rerun? Should I wait for a solo sustain that can DoT in the future?

i really hate the state of preservation vs abundance because of the fact they work similarly, to sustain the team one way or another I hope preservation goes to a similar route like fire TB with taunts ( maybe an all aoe taunt or jump in front of allies when being targetted) . Might do the same thing essentially but helps build the idea that preservation isnt jz abundance but replace heals with shield. Then at least building hp/defence feels natural because the preservation is expected to get hit alot instead of having shields that scale with def just because

one thing with realise of rift wolfs , this way they nerfed shields so after that people realized how important healers are (and most of them skipped kokomi durning 2.1) so my thinking process is that maybe in future content they might add some enemies that bypass shields who knows

Here's my predictions for future abundance and preservation Abundance chars will either increade team's hp and add dmg reduction on top (ik it's literally what part of Fu Xuan's kit does) or add "damage caps" like each enemy attack can only deal 50% of allies max hp Preservation could prioritise the character itself for tanking while lowering if not negatinf the teams damage taken (basically fire mc but better)

I just got Aventurine and he's my first limited sustain. Should I aim for Fu Xuan or wait for limited healer?

Yo random question. Is Gepard powercrept now? Like he can't tank against late game content.