Do Genshin Impact's Elements Need A Rework? 

They could go with a 4 party member resonance for other options for those comps

The elements have to focus on damage, because the only way in which this game increases difficulty is shoving more HP into an enemy. Meaning any other thing you give them aside from raw damage or damage amp is worthless. So unless Genshin does a drastic overhaul in the way in which they do “hard” content (they won’t) damage will be all that matters.

As long as there's a timer on combat events like spiral abyss and this latest one where you have to have 3 teams, the only thing to care about is damage.

i agree that the game is too focused on damage but the issue isnt the elemental reactions being too damage focused, its the content having no form of difficulty other than the dps check. the specifics of characters kits get ignored not just because the element is more important, but because traditional combat mechanics arent meta in a game purely focused on time limits. and your ideas are great in a vacuum but in genshin any limitations are just paywalls where if you have the right units combat is a joke and if you dont its virtually impossible

I feel like the game would benefit of making survivability checks. Fights in which instead of dealing a bjillion damage, you need to survive a period of time in which the enemy is causing great damage constantly and you’ll need tanks, shielders and healers survive, and maybe the less damage you take, the more damage you deal to the boss when the window opens. That would add variety to the game and incentive the usage of characters usually left behind for not being damage dealers Edit: if they do this, it should be a separate boss or maybe even a new abyss. This idea doesn’t belong in the damage check hell of the spiral abyss

13:26 I just want to say that enemies can use the reactions against the player. Hence the chamber 1 second half on 3.7 abyss in which you could be frozen for funsies and in the worst case you could get one shotted

We had some kind of incentivised elemental matchup abyss in 3.7 and a lot of players complained lol It's not only about having the required unit of that element, but also about building the team around the unit cuz artifact farming is a pain in the ass. It can only be fun if abyss is not a time based dps check.

I bet if miHoYo took your advice of FORCING players to bring certain or multiple elements of characters, the majority of players will be outraged

The issue is simple, it's the fact that there's only one endgame objective: completing the abyss. And abyss is simply a DPS check for the most part, it's a flaw inherent to its system of killing all enemies in a limited timeframe. It's incredibly dumb and it's what is causing most problems with mihoyo having to do everything in its power to avoid powercreep. It's how we end up getting characters with nigh useless kits like Dehya because the focus of all character tends to be simply one, a DPS countdown challenge.

I totally agree with your take (for the game to "force" us to use our overshadowed units from x element like Xinyan and Beidou). The only downside i see is if it is obligatory not everyone will have said unit, especially new players. But yeah, as a first patch player, i too want character usage variety and not bench my Collei just because she isn't on par with Nahida or DMC in terms of damage or apliccation. Anyways, loved the video, keep it up my guy!

The only issue with trying to push more content that requires specific elements is that it’s a gacha game and unless they have like four characters for each roll for each element for each weapon type then no one would have what they need to play I do wish it wasn’t all damage and we had some healing or interruption resistance or any reason to use an element that wasn’t forced

On the flip side, Genshin really is a game that taps into character appeal A big goal seems to be making sure ppl don't get the feeling that their favorite character is bad That means minimizing any potential "I can't use this character here"

Every new character that comes outs value has been attributed to how well they apply their element. I’m hoping Fontaine will change this with pnemua and ouisa

6:36 ...Girl your delulu level is at all time high. SINCE WHEN DO PYRO CHARACTERS FOCUS ON DOING ONE BIG BURST HIT and do nothing else after that 😭 Every single Pyro character focuses on doing periodic Pyro damage. Even Bennett does when you get his C6 although he is still used for his skill spam. 8:06 ... COMPETING WITH WHO?!!!! DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW KEQING AND CYNO TEAMS ARE STRUCTURED?! 9:24 imagine being mad that people can get a really cheap and VERY STRONG CHARACTER at C0 13:15 I AM NOW 100% CERTAIN YOU DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME 14:04 PREVENTING YOU FROM USING WHAT... Girl, get out

This is nearlly impossible to do. Because the game lays on a balance, like you said, every caracter has a unique kit that makes it useable for different thing even when there's some look a like (hello Xinqyu and Yelan). And the game is supposed to be playable with every single of those caracter (less and less nowaday actually). And the risk of what you're asking is that every caracter become unskipable and necessary to your box. Making fall drasticlly the feeling of playing with the caracter that you like. There already is a necessity to have a bit of everything in your box in the game rightnow (i know mine lacks a Pyro unit a lot, i only have Ayaka as cryo for now) because ther's already is a order of wich element is strong against wich element. But it is still possible to complete the game using other ways as i have 36star in abyss in this update and the last one, and 34star since a loooong time while not having pyro caracter properly built, and if i cannot keep going in the game because i haven't the right pyro caracter, not caring about if i WANTED this caracter to beging with, then i'll just end up quitting it. Don't know if i made myself clear cause it's not my maternal languages but to conclude, making elements a little bit more special that they already are by the way they're doing dps might be a good thing, but adding up a way too much of speciallity and everyone them will become in one way or another, a necessity. Wich would be a bad thing in Genshin Impact unlike a Pokemon Game, because it is a gasha. And the game will require to whale money much more that it already does. This is a never ending cycle, some game design choices in Genshin might need improvement but doing so might unballance the game in another way and lead to some other neccessity of improvement...that might lead to even more game design leaking feature and so on. There's a saying existing in France wich says "Best is the ennemy of the good". Wich is a little odd because French people used to seek improvement in every way possible for their environnement. But it might be right cause after acheving it's prime and being the greatest country to live in on the only known planet with life, we're going down really hard and really fast... Anyway, their is a lot of thing that needs improvement in Genshin Impact and that are way less subject of breaking the game's balance that the really core gameplay design of the game so i'd rather wait for those to come first. For security reasons. Congrats for reading until the end, here's a virtual hug.

The problem is that, in general, damage will always be the ruler of the meta in both gacha-based games, and games as a whole. Even if there are things that don't do damage, the question becomes "How do those help me facilitate more damage?" Even in the case of defensive reactions, their usefulness would be in letting you get away with less healing/shielding, and thus dealing more damage. And in the case of non-outright damage reactions, like the buffing reaction concept you said, it would be directly compared with the damaging reactions when it comes to performance. It's a distinction without a difference. I think we are far more likely to see characters that can make reactions do additional things that will make reactions more tactically interesting, rather than seeing reactions themselves change. (Which, of course, means that old characters probably won't get helped by this unless they have good synergy with the new ones) And while the obvious choice that comes to mind first is Nilou, that's not really the sort of thing I was thinking of. I was more thinking of characters like Sayu, adding healing onto Swirl. (Or a certain upcoming Cryo claymore and his interaction with a specific Cryo reaction)

I just really, REALLY want elemental reactions to have some sort of special effects on the enemies and on the player. Examples: +When you deals Melt dmg to an enemy, after the reaction of propped, Hydro will be auto propped on the enemy too. +Whenever Superconduct/Overload/Electrocharge is propped, the enemy's defense will be reduced and the enemy is more likely to be stunt. +Have swirl to have different effects instead of just... Swirl. Have Pyro Swirl deals burn damage on top of swirl, Hydro swirl slows down the enemy and so on. Of course to balance things out, the players themselves will be affected by these reactions when they're propped, making the players taking more damage and making us actually raising our game skill. Just my personal opinion, if you're against this, I don't care :P

To counter your argument on differentiation, enemies have element-based resistances and element-based shields are becoming increasingly more common. There are a lot of nuances between units when you consider swapping one unit in a team to adjust to different circumstances.

I'd love to see a video going into detail how adding a timer to the spiral abyss has effected the entire fundamental design of the game and how people experience it. From reactions based team comps, to spending months farming for characters' "best" builds, to some players spending hours a week trying to kill some mobs just a little faster. I wonder how different the game would be if the added more win conditions to spiral abyss like protecting the monument.

We never had a actual swirl cc unit since the announcement of inazuma.

I think we have enough varied supports for our dmg dealers. For example, zhongli might not boost dmg as much as benny boi but he makes dealing dmg way more sustainable

My idea is first they should introduce more elemental resonances like Anemo with Electro boost ER and reduce stamina and cooldown, another great thing for both damage and design is obviously more off field skills and bursts which is something I’m hoping for Hydro Aether otherwise he’s just like Anemo which is nothing new.

I remember Childe weekly boss first phase having a bonus attack when attacked with Hydro, so the idea of challenge was there, but was not developed much into the game😢

I think the reason why is to encourage players to use the elements they like instead if what they need, having some elements do a certain utility means that if a boss comes along that requires you beat them using a certain element or reaction then it means that you'll be required to use character for that you don't like in order to win, think of spiral abyss where some floors have Abyss lectors which requires you to use very specific element in order to destroy their shield quickly in order to get 3 stars which doesn't feel good imagine if in the future we fight a lvl 100 Azdaha where shields are a necessity because he does too much dmg. it means that many teams just don't work and you'll have to use a shield character or multiple in order to just win

Even in situations where certain elements are forced the things that make a character good don't real change, and often makes things worse. Elemental shields don't make characters bad at reactions better, they make them SUBSTANTIALLY worse. The best way to deal with the abyss guy with 4 elemental shields is to blast him with constant element application from xianling/bennet + xingqiu or yelan, because otherwise each shield would take like 10 seconds to break and you wouldn't be able to win in abyss. The things that make a character good are pretty much set in stone at this point, barring gimmicks like the ousa/pneuma which are only designed to push new characters that aren't actually as powerful as the characters that have been in the game since day one. Short of actually buffing them or making hyper specific and wildly overpowered artifacts, there's nothing they can do to make the bad characters good at this point.

Still feels strange that having a Cryo aura slows you down when no other element does anything similar. Also it would be cool to make characters have more consistent forms of elemental self-application, like how Barbara applies the Hydro element on yourself which can accidentally freeze you if you're afflicted with Cryo. If more characters applied elements onto themselves for longer periods of time, the enemy can take advantage of that especially via Freeze and Overloaded.

About the elemental typing thing. Varsie, do you know that enemies have different elemental resistences, or is that a new information.

content defines meta. If the content is about if you know the mech, know the fight and not too much time gated, then people will try and balance out survival and damage, but as of now ? I'm slapping full damage team, no heal needed, maybe except whenever the doggos come up

I really love dendro teams and dendro characters but I don't like the design of dendro itself. I thought that dendro would be about nature, plants and environment but it is actually green energy. I thought that we could have a dendro + geo that could root enemies for example. I think that dendro cores are well designed, but as you said, dendro is about damage and damage alone.

With Pnemua and Ousia it's obvious that every nation from now on will have its own "elemental" interactions that comes with new characters from that nation, and characters from older nations will not have that mechanic implemented so you are forced to pull new characters even if they are ultra weak compared to Yelan or Kazuha or anyone that's considered OP.

Honestly good video. And I agree. We definitely need more enemies that utilize the element reactions more.

I prefer healing to damage. It doesn’t matter how much damage i do if I can do it forever

BTW enemies do have resistance to there elements like how the we nut has anemo resistance so the notion of "make Pyro stronger against dendro or cryo enemies" is already in the game.

I would kinda dig it if they would introduce like light and darkness elements. Dont know how, just sayin it would be cool.

It would be cool if the game gave us different elemental reactions that we can choose between, or at least different effects. For example, why does Vaporize necessarily have to give that hit an extra damage boost? Maybe it can make the enemy more susceptible to damage for the next however many seconds instead, or be a transformative reaction like Electro-Charged; meanwhile Electro-Charged can also make enemies more susceptible to damage or maybe if an enemy if Electro-Charged it gives nearby characters 1 Energy every 2 seconds. Or Freeze is hard to change, but maybe we can buff the Shatter aspect since it's currently underutilized, while giving a second effect that makes enemies take more damage after being Frozen for however long.

I love how your videos make the perfect pairing for my workouts ❤ your voice rocks AND the video is interesting

Elemental reactions either deal damage, or aid in survivability/crowd control. Problem is that SUR/CC are seldom needed. If there are any modes that focuses on CC and Survivability, then reactions like Overload will see increased usage. But there isn't any such content. Most content in genshin involves out-running the timer. So you need damage. If there was a content focused on running down the timer instead, then that would be a different story.

@12:20 I also liked the last event where you needed to use 3 different teams with unique members to complete it. Made me appreciate a lot of units i usually wouldn't use in SA ..

I will give you my two cents about it even though it might be a bit out of topic. 1) Super Resonance : I would add a resonance so that you can built teams with 2+2 Elements ( sort of Nilou bloom style) . You could really give to Overload or Electrocharged teams a brand new revamp with such a feature. Basically the combinations of specific elements (2+2) give you Super Resonance, on top of the normal resonance that you would get . 2) This would need to be connected with the Lore in a way. Geo needs to be saved. And you could do that through a new alliance and a new pact between the Archons. After a specific ( hypothetical) event Zhongli gets closer to the other archins forming a new bond and thus new elemental reactions. Geo + Pyro : Molten ( Higher resistance to interruption, slowing enemies , explosion dmg ) Geo + Hydro : Sand ( something that boosts hp of allies and reduces defenses of enemies) Geo + Dendro ( a whole new bloom that reacts with cryo and anemo). And so on... Actually it would be very nice if you could make a video about it.

I was running geo teams and as soon as i switched to reaction team all my struggle to clear enemies dissapeared. I just wish non reaction combs could as viable as reactions

patch 1.x : Critical Impact patch 2.x : Energy Impact patch 3.x : Elemental Impact patch 4.x : Health Impact?

the thing I want is to be added a place like spyral abbys . this place dose not restrict you with time, but with challenges like beat the domein with only 3 units, only use pyro and geo , only use 3 star wepon

As always, the problem with the idea of REQUIRING characters for certain content is how building a character is expensive. If the few characters a player has built become unusable and they need to spend months building a new team just for some content, "catching up" would be even worse than it already is. We can point out Genshin's failures of game design all we want, but at their root is the fact it's a gacha. Those mechanics are what hamstrung its potential as a game from the very beginning.

i feel like the first fontaine 5* we are getting could be indicative of a slight shift in meta, with lyney hyper focusing on mono element teams without causing a lack in dps, perhaps for future releases we can see more insentive for characters personal dps as opposed to reactions.

I dont have that much experience with rpgs with advantage systems, but from the few Ive played, It gets to a point that not having someone somewhat good on the specific advantage type can pretty much make It Impossible to pass certain challenges unless youre at the super high end with some other neutral unit. Thats usually Fine, but in genshin thatd be a huge problem, specially for new-ish players since we not only dont get caracteres as frequently as other gatchas, but specially since building up a single character is so expensive (Just think about farming artifacts for a new unit on every single elemental type, not to mention leveling them and their talents, along their respective suports. We already had a situation like that when the worf lord was put in the abyss and anyone who hadnt a geo main builded up or zhongli would need to puta in their party a random unit thatd do nothing but break that shield and thus reduce the Power of their team, thatd work as a 3 chars then, and there were a Lot of complaints in there I dont see the hyperfocus in dmg as being a problem as long as the abyss is on time limitation, but id be interesterested If they changed the objective there and we had to adapt trying to get at the new objective

9:57 EXCELLENT POINTS! Seriously, thank you for making clear how important more genuine variety is. I should note that I have PTSD because of a sadist involved in the Genshin Impact balance team, keeping in mind that I haven't even played Genshin Impact, but I for sure will never want to play it as long as people like her are given free power. Having you deconstruct Genshin Impact's "balance" is very solid to see. Something I would like to punctuate is that I have been working on a series of comments about Kid Icarus Uprising's balance and how a remaster can be improved. And right now, I'm focusing on how Clubs can be improved and I'm finding that the bulk of them (not all of them, as I'll exclude the 3 you're probably thinking of now) could stand to innately inflict debuffs on enough given attacks, even at reduced durations and chance values compared to using the equivalent Powers, to compliment their raw power, rather than giving them yet more power. I can give a few examples of my suggestions: Skyscraper Club will get Paralysis for improved chasing ability. Black Club will get Weaken to reward consistent attacking. And Aurum Club will get Shaking to grant it the ability to do range disruption. What my point is that easier damage output capability does still need to be a uniquely useful trait for character choice rather than free of charge for basically everybody. Honestly, I thank you again for making as much clear, and I can add my own point that we want people to care about their anti-armor options because those tend to encourage the better points of the involved characters. At the same time, we can't even stop there, because Mighty Glaciers also do need to be distinct from each other too. The aforementioned Skyscraper Club in KIU is that game's definitive Mighty Glacier/Melee Tornado hybrid and we do want people to consider risk assessment instead of trying to stay away all the damn time to make cheesy MUs, which we want to check fast, but this turns out to be a superficial level when all is said and done. Skyscraper Club's character is supposed to be some technological whiz who can work as a Magic Knight, something I can absolutely get behind. My point is that even the Mighty Glaciers don't necessarily want "lolmoarpowar" but rather, they should get to work with the deeper systems even if they shouldn't be broken about it, which thankfully is not ridiculously likely to happen.

We need an Update where some Elemental Reactions can both deal damage and heal at the same time Edit: Nevermind

the game that is literally designed around doing x amount of damage in y amount of time limit incentives you to play high damage teams? no shit. on top of that elemental reactions helps you to do more damage? holy shit! who could have known! this is a combat game, you hurt things to kill things. it's naturally better to hurt things more and faster. dead content lmao.

My ideas: Shields (Elemental) -once the shields are broken, they apply the same element of the shield to up to three different opponents (doesnt do dmg [can do dmg if a reaction is made]) Anemo + geo -similar to corrosion but can be stacked Geo + Dendro -heals small amount of HP via the form of small healing flowers (can be collected by walking over them) Cryo + dendro -a debuff in maybe atk or def

I love your take on it, but The problem with it and my beef with the current state of the game is that you have to level up and artifact farm to make different char really work

The implementation of this has been somehow implemented in HSR, where you do need specific element to break the toughness bar. Mind you that you could go without breaking it but it's significantly slower. However, this locks new player from the new contents if they tried the proposed way mentioned in this video. Perhaps, it is better to only do this on event only, considering the state of the game, which Genshin does try to do and do it very well.

my favourite team comp rn for abyss is double geo double anemo for mobs. I get free elements by absorbing the attacks of the mob in kazuha's swirl, then just rapid fire pew pew with scar while cloaked in invincibility thanks to a geo shield :p

I mean, enemies already have varying resistances to damage types. It's most visible in ruin type enemies, which have very high physical resistance. Something that could help is making these values visible to players in-game in some way, for example if you engage in combat with an enemy, icons will show up near their health bar that will tell you if an enemy will take more, less or no damage from a certain type. Then you could create domains with enemies with 80% or more resistance to, for instance, all damage types except pyro to encourage you to use a pyro DPS against them.

They can't diversify requirements and force players to use all their units because it takes too much time to build that many characters. Ultimately all of the game's flaws go back to "not enough resin and primogems" which is a nicer way of saying P2W always makes games worse.

hyperbloom goes brrrr

There is a mechanics in the same that increase that matchups you talking about, which is Elemental Notes. Enemy with these elemental notes have buff & more res & different moves sets then when being disabled by removing their Buff with reactions. Fountains even gonna take it up another notchs by making the new 2 alighments that's special to Fountain only, but I heard that you can still overpower those elemental notes without using Fountain Characters, it just using Fountain characters disable their ability to rebuff themselves with elemental notes. I hope that's true since genshin been keeping a good track of not required the game pay to wins (aka you can beats floor 12 with 36s stars with only 4 stars/ not too many premium characters)

I think what is missing are reactions that may not be purely damage but supportive in nature like reducing enemy shield strength, increasing crit rate, debuffs and buffs like HSR

I didn't appreciate it at the time, but there was a combat event a few patches back that could let you customize the difficulty (I forget the name of it), and one of the things it let you do was _choose whether or not the timer was active._ If you wanted the highest score, you needed to turn all the settings to max, but otherwise you could just crank everything up _except_ the timer and the fight would be closer to something like Monster Hunter or a Souls-like, allowing people to use their favorite characters without feeling too much like they're crippling themselves. I think being able to tweak the difficulty in Spiral Abyss would be good for everyone. Those who want to flex can go balls out with the mods, and those who don't can just tweak the settings they want for a comfortable challenge.

...Theres also the fact that said options just exist. if a person playing Sayu is considered a restriction and not just wanting to fully utilize a certain characters playstyle i consider that good game design Its an opinion but ive always felt like these videos are to isolated. Like theres not much effort to see what outside Vars small community Why does no one play X and the idea of X mains must be the outlier. But the metric is Abyss runs on the CN server its not a gauge of what characters are popular or what the typical Genshin player actual uses(digging around a bit its mostly just put random characters in there team) Its not possible to get data like that without raiding Hoyo's basement but the idea that players must be incentived by vertical progression is ...wrong. Even banner sales its not players not wanting X character its certain players getting C1's or C2's and whaling. If you dont give a crap about huge numbers why whale beyond getting the Base value of the character. Versus people who believe that spending that extra 250 will give them a "better Raiden" I would say the Elemental System does have nuance beyond damage its the issue of the louder individuals putting emphasis on damage. Its like Spiral Abyss Its the only metric for evaluating Power Level but is so oriented on one play style only a few characters can be considered good for that type of content In content where you want to mitigate as much damage as possibe picking up a Crystal and getting a quick shield or having weak shields in exchange for taking the damage needed is a way elements can come into play Its a form of survivability content that relies on the player being reactivate instead of just hitting an opponent. And you can basically make different variations on all the properties these elements provide outside damage

What is weapon comps also come into play? If everyone uses Catalysts, increase party wide elemental mastery and have elements last longer on enemies. If 2 uses swords and 2 uses Claymore, then increase party wide damage and increase skills damage

This is kinda why I think hydro is almost too good with every element having something with it making almost every character viable for any role since by nature of hp scaling being the expectation and that being the best thing to scale by in the game it makes hydro units a jack of all trades master of all while every other element focuses on damage or cc Like legit what is the last time you have made a team that did not have any hydro in it And I don't think the enemy mentioned at the end is a good example mostly because in the over world they are to weak and die in 20 seconds or you fail and they take 2 minutes with the main problem being that most teams lack consistent application on demand without burst and the units that do attack slowly so you have to go through another phase. But in spiral abyss the boss becomes a chore since you can't build a team just around them you need to go through 2 other waves so you may not choose the best team for the boss.

I think the problem. Is that it is too hard too build characters in Genshin. I started about 6 months ago with mostly time in but some time off. I just hit AR 50 and have 1 team built for end game. And I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the game, can kill even bosses pretty well. But that one team took FOREVER to even get to an endgame ready level. Forcing you to build multiple characters just seems like hurting more casual players. Which are a majority of the player base at the end of the day.

I don't have issue with game posing us to only use specific elements, I have issue with the timer in abyss which forces us to use the highest dps ceiling team , i have issue with the lit low amount of 160 resin cap with prevents you from building a character u like, i have issue with how fked up rng is in artifacts. If these don't exist I would gladly use qiqi in abyss.

off topic but that 156k charge from kock is very splendid

The big issue with super element focused content that you might have to do is when your high level it takes so long to bring a character up to the level you need that it becomes not fun and just annoying to do

Bruh even the meta nerds lost their mind when the baptist was placed in the abyss last time and complained that it was too hard and restrictive. So i don't think they'll make more enemies like it.

We only have 1 defensive elemental reaction, and people already upset about that..

Seems like the way to address this is through future enemies not characters or reactions, which I think Hoyo is already starting to do. Enemies have resistance stats, and recent ones (and some older ones) like Hilichurl rogue and consecrated beasts have increased resistances to certain elemental damage types. A lot of players aren't aware of these resistances though because Hoyo doesn't mention them in detail, so the onus is on players to look them up online. Maybe introducing a gadget that lets you look at and record elemental weaknesses of enemies (thinking like Persona 5) could be an interesting way to make players more aware of some of these weaknesses. Hoyo could also have more enemies apply auras on themselves so that you have to think about what kind of reactions still work. They do this minorly with some enemies by adding elemental shields or your example of thunder manifestation. Also, maybe have more characters apply auras to themselves with their abilities so that enemies can cause reactions on players more. This might make more players consider which elements would be dangerous for them to use or how to use their own auras to cleanse enemy applied auras. I don't think that the damage focused elemental reactions need to change to do this. The one completely undamage-releated reaction you pointed out, crystallize, is notoriously the least used reaction. Changing other reactions to be defensive minded might make them as equally unused unless Hoyo stops making the hardest content in the game time restricted. However a Geo reaction overhaul with more powerful defensive upsides could be popular in the same way Zhongli is still very popular for his defensive utility despite his low damage.

Completely disagree, in a gacha game where resources are heavily limited, I rather not be forced to spend resources on characters that are conventionally not meta, the freedom of using any characters on any enemies is what makes genshin fun, imposing limits drives away players and stretches the limited resources so much that you can’t progress in the game

I saw a comment somewhere in here (in the reply sections) that suggests a version of the Abyss that goes ‘how long you can survive’ mode, and I absolutely had to put it here. It’d be game changer. Especially for players whose fav character’s kit is survival based (looking at Noelle mains) Imagine a domain where you have to continuously (I don’t even know how to do it), dodge, shield, heal and rely on freeze, overload & other survival reactions like your life depends on it to win… For those who have the dodge ability of a rock (like me), characters like Baizhu or Zhongli become straight up meta 😂

Imagine if each element had its own reaction when paired with itself. Like continuous electro application created paralysis at a 25% chance.

They tried challenging this when they did 3.7. Abyss. The cyro/hydro Ayss Lectors, Baptists and the consecrated beasts, but as you all know, many lost their minds.

Type advantages can be interesting only if all players have access to all types, and it's also important that said players enjoy using the units on said types. Pneuma and Ousia mechanics can very easily force F2P and even low-spenders into using Fontaine units if they decide a boss needs Ousia to be knocked down, like the Aeonblight Drake needs a bow unit, the difference being bow units have been existing since the start of the game, while Pneuma/Ousia is going to start existing after 4.0 but is also getting implemented into the abyss in the close future. At the end of the day, Genshin is a gacha game, it relies on the fact people can't have all the units they want without spending money, or waiting for a long time, but if they're adding mechanics that force you to use a specific roster of units in the abyss, they're basically gating those people that don't have Pneuma/Ousia units out of their gameplay and primogems. Also I'd like to touch on the Baptist being "good design", which is something I very much disagree on, during the time he was on abyss, a lot of people player Bennett/XL/XQ/Nahida not because it was a good team, using Nahida makes you lose vapes because of burning, but those units were simply the best at applying their element to break the shields, while also having good motion value to kill the low health boss even without the reactions, it's the biggest example of units being used not for their gameplay or synergy, but instead for their pure elemental application.

I was really hoping a Dendro reaction would provide some healing or buffs to make the element more accessible. But they just put it into more busted ways to deal greater damage instead.

Man forgot the first follow-up reaction before Quicken in the game: Shatter (Frozen-Blunt). Unusable with Bosses, but it's still there :^)

I need help. I have 81 wishes atm with zero pity and no guarantee. If I get Zhongli in 4.0, will i be able to get Focalors in 4.2 😖? Honestly, my gut is telling to not risk anything and just wait until his next rerun.

The fact that genshin is a gacha means that they could never reasonably force team comps due to the very nature of it being money first over game first.

The prognosis of Geo’s future viability is almost entirely resting upon the shoulders of either Navia’s kit, or some unlikely future patch update in which Geo is reworked, likely involving a fundamental upheaval of the Crystallize reaction, or the arguably even more unlikely emergence of new Geo reactions altogether.

I feel like the idea of enemies being a certain element and being strong/weak to other elements like pokemon is a great idea to make you use one comp over another. I highly doubt they would rework all the enemies to have this sort of relationship with elements, but what they could do is just make new enemies that do adhere to that system and use them alot more often. There are already glimpses of making you choose one type of damage over another such as the ruin enemies being extremely resistant to physical and the slimes being immune, but 99% of the enemies are just "hit them until they die".

I've wanted them to shift to an element type-matchup system since nearly the very beginning being an electro main you can see the beginnings of type advantages with early game fatui harbingers and when fighting abyss mages, you can easily see this by the efficiency to break their shields: pyro->cryo->hydro->pyro electro has NEVER fit into this type-advantage system with electro affecting each of the shields in essentially the same way; and with the release of the electro abyss mage, you could see that 3 other "primary" elements essentially share the same efficiency against electro shields on electro abyss mages and electro lawachurls I feel like hoyo has missed a big opportunity to give the 4 primary elements a proper type-advantage system, where they could very easily slot in electro like: pyro->cryo->electro->hydro->pyro; and you can already see some semblance of this system against the electro fatui hammer enemies having cryo as their main weakness for their shield then anemo would be effective against all the primary elements but not itself or geo, and geo would be effective against itself and anemo, but not the primary elements; OR anemo and geo could act like dragon and fairy types in Pokemon (I've never actually played a Pokemon game so I don't understand the type advantage system well, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they work as both weakness and advantage to each-other); I'm not exactly sure how dendro would fit since I've had this idea since like 1.1 and dunno how dendro would work in this supposed system

Tbh its so easy to make varied content for each of the units but it doesn't help with their sales like that so they wont bother. You can easily make a boss that can only be killed once you hit them a certain amount of times so characters that have faster multi hitting attacks are favored over the straight damage of the attack. Or a boss thats only affected by Elemental bursts or an enemy that continously heals back to full hp unless you hit a damage threshold all at once (so big hitters like Eula or Raiden) make a boss where crowdcontrol is necessary to effectivly beat them because there are too many enemies to hit all at once or something. There are so many ways to diversify these bosses but they wont do it because that would require the players to use their brain a lil snd they already said they dont want players to do that

I don't know, for me specifically, the stun/interrupt effect plays major role. I often choose to sacrifice the damage to gain more control. For example, when fighting wishaps in the Millelith domain, I use overloaded team specifically to interrupt and knock back them as much as possible. unfortunately, you can't really do it reliably, so it is kinda messy, but the possibility is there.

I heard indirect and unofficial news about dehya's dmg will increase in the coming versions

One thing they could do with spiral abyss is have survive times sometimes. Like you have to survive for X amount of time before beating the enemies instead of beating them within a certain time.

A possible problem with forcing the use of certain niches, such as healing or shielding is the feeling of being forced to bring a certain character niche. Right now, mono-geo is still playable, but not everyone enjoys that playstyle. I believe it is also possible to clear abyss with ANY well built character roster right now (Which motivates players to pull for those they like, not just for a niche). Forcing players to have certain restrictions other than damage would likely not reflect well on F2P players, since they would be forced to pull characters they dislike to fill the niches - something Genshin tries to avoid. Having a universal system avoids this mandate. I remember a combat event with hypostasis that required built characters of all elements, something I did not have at the time. I had to give up, which did not feel good at all. I think that type based or combo based weaknesses would fare better than a mandate which I hope Fontaine could add.

You'd have to rebuild all the enemies to need things other than just pure DPS to resolve them. A simplistic example would be like abyss mage shields being more fragile to the correct element and more resilient otherwise. You could easily imagine enemies that are put into different states by different elements or slow-moving enemy attacks that can be rebuffed by attacking them and have different reactions based on what element is used; i.e. water bullets bounce back and stun the enemy if hit by Cryo, or they damage us more but generate tons of particles when hit by Electro., etc. Or anything where you benefited from reacting and using elements tactically instead of just pumping in as much damage as possible wile trying to avoid getting interrupted. But the problem with all this is, not only would you have to rebuild all the enemies in the game, you'd then have to rebuild all the characters to work with the new paradigm that's about something other than stacking up buffs to damage. You could start implementing changes with new enemies and characters, but that would create a break in the game where old characters are no good for dealing with new enemies, and new characters are less good at dealing with old enemies. That's the corner that they've painted themselves into with Genshin's design. You could implement a tiny bit of those changes, push it right up to the breaking point, and it would probably do a lot to spice up the game. But if they were that smart the game wouldn't have the problems it does to begin with. That's why we're getting a silly alignment system for Fontaine characters that mostly won't matter, and will just be another nonsense annoyance when it does.

The thing is since Spiral Abyss is basically the only form of end game content and it is basically a big DPS check DPS matters the most. Even if the reactions have other properties it will all come down to DPS I think Spiral Abyss should move away from Time challenges and be more of a technical challenge which have more complicated patterns and require more than just which team comp can do the most damage in the shortest time. Maybe having multiple requirements at the same time. That would lend more focus on what the elemental reactions are doing rather than how much damage they are doing. There needs to be some change in how reactions work themselves but it is more on how Spiral Abyss is designed rather than the reactions themselves

In my opinion, there needs to be more elemental reactions that directly affect combat through non-damaging means. A few ideas that the community has had are things like Anemo and Geo creating small sandstorms that deal a minimal amount of damage but pull lighter enemies in like a lesser version of Kazhuha's skill, Dendro and Cryo having a reaction that reduces an enemy's elemental defense, Dendro and Anemo having a reaction that causes affected enemies to burst out in a pollen cloud that inflicts a movement and attack speed debuff, etc. One of the ones I came up with is even having Geo be able to react with itself through a unique reaction, where with enough Geo damage procs an effect similar to Zhongli's petrify occurs and makes the enemies have their attack reduced while also becoming vulnerable to and taking more damage from heavy attacks like the shatter effect from being frozen. And one of my friends came up with a reaction due to Pyro damage procs called Overheat, where the enemy would take more damage from Pyro attacks and exude a small aura that causes enemies in the aura to also receive half that Pyro vulnerability. With the game being so focused on its elements as a core part of both gameplay and story, I'm genuinely surprised MHY said they're not going to add more reactions to the game.

lets say i have, a5 wagu steak, a herb garden, and high quality sea salt, why should i use the funny frozen herbs, floor salt, and serloin?

It's looking like Fontaine might add some variety to this.

Don't that have something similar via the Reputation Bounties with those immunities and bonus damage?

Funny they have actually made a way healthier abyss which, to me, is the Legend of Vagabond swords and Hypostasis Symphony events. Those events allows you to pick a whole bunch of buff for your enemies and you're not forced to have a timer. So, you can try out a bunch of different team comp without having to stress out about damage. It only comes to mechanisms.

My win condition is efficiency. Can I do the daily routine in as little time as possible? Yelan and Kazuha are a must for me. Means I have to force myself to use less "efficient" teams for new content so I take my time to enjoy it.

I think the groundwork for non-combat uses of elements was laid down in version 1.0, which is, I think, why Barbara was given out for free & every Anemo character back then had some form of crowd control. Problem is, it's not a popular feature (Geo being perceived as weak because it's lackluster as a defense element, Hydro resonance being seen as useless in shield-dominated meta) & a lot of a character's strength in the meta is measured by their performance in Spiral Abyss, where the only difficulty available is DPS check. There's also the design of almost every boss combat in the game providing no incentive for players to do any more than deal more damage (notice how most boss arenas have flat surfaces and nothing else; at least Apep's 2nd phase forces you to hide in a specific position).

Tbh it's not the reactions, it's the content. There's great variance in reactions the amplifying ones simply increase damage, while the transformative ones have different effects. Superconduct is a debuff, Electro-Charged also works as an AoE debuff of sorts, Overload provides stagger, Swirl spreads elements around, Freeze locks enemies into place, and Crystallize gives you a shield. The weak ones are weak because they lack the external character/artifact support that the others have gotten (Superconduct) or just plain have shit numbers (Crystallize), but that's not a problem with the lack of diversity in reaction concepts. There's also diversity in character playstyles, with a lot of variance in animations, preference towards Normal/Charged/Plunging vs. quick-swapping, melee vs. ranged, and single-target vs. AoE. Since this is a gacha game, I hesitate to support any content that requires really specific things in order to clear - this isn't Pokemon where you can reliably have a large pool of options to pick from - and would rather have a system where you can use anyone to clear hard content. The main reason the reactions feel like they're all evaluated on damage is because the hardest content in the game is a timed DPS check where challenge is introduced simply by ballooning the HP pool and introducing bosses with stupid amounts of stalling. There's definitely a place for utility like Swirl and Freeze and when it's not the entire abyss (like the last one) the shields do add some variety but for the most part it's just damage damage damage. There are of course flaws. Hydro is a bit too ubiquitous, but I chalk that up to other reactions like Superconduct and Shatter just being ignored. VV and Blizzard Strayer could be argued to be to broken. Then there's Dendro: Dendro just made everything worse and is the biggest counterargument to my point. The Quicken reaction was nice in that it's a good reaction without Hydro and doesn't always need Swirl but it's just a reskinned Vaporize/Melt. Bloom is just "stack EM, number go big", which does have its interesting aspects that mainly involve nerdy elemental gauge stuff (I do enjoy the four-element kitchen teams) but vanilla Hyperbloom's floor is just way too high. Bloom just made the entire element's roster a Dendro bot contest where Nahida is queen and everyone else fights for scraps. The Dendro reactions as a whole still have good new mechanics but are a step down from the initial ones and it was kind of forced upon us with ASIMON being in every other abyss and Freeze being nuked to the ground by bosses being everywhere on both sides of the abyss.

Thats why i like wanderer he kinda has utility in his ascension skill when swirling

The new pneumaousia system being added with fontaine is proabably something they are using to force certain types of characters into challenges, in a permanent sense. If enemies now have natural weaknesses, you would need the opposing type to counter them. This would work if you require those counters. If the enemy can still just be killed with high dps, then the system is useless.

I feel they already have a foundation for all these reactions, I just wish they made them more impactful. there are already auras from different reactions, why not have them apply status effects? (freeze = being frozen, Swirl = DoT, electro-charged = attack harder but take more dmg, Burning = every attack they take backlash dmg, Superconduct = ???, Overload = explosion and stun, Quicken/spread/aggrevate = ???, crystalize = reduces res and slows, Shatter = forced stun, and keep vaporize and melt dmg because pyro is all about dmg) idk what to do with bloom reactions

It's just an idea and perhaps it is bad but perhaps having "Abyssal element" that can mitigate/overwrite reactions while adapting to what players do would be rather interesting thing to have, of course only enemies would have access to it and perhaps counter to it would be physical damage, it possesses no element so breaking the "abyssal power" with non-elemental hits sounds like reasonable thing. As for lorewise explanation - Abyss actually scoring a bit win and having them gain visible presence everywhere would be really nice thing, perhaps bringing back the thing that doomed "that place" (I don't know where people who read this comment are in story so I am vague).

To make sure I'm not dependant on raw elemental dmg I just play Bloom and Hyperbloom. Those teams value elemental application *alone*, everything above is just overkill.