Is Honkai: Star Rail Power Creeping Too Much? 

Lot of comments mentioning HSR being a "Honkai" game so of course it has more power creep. Is HI3 really that nasty with power creep? LOL

my favorite Star Rail moment is when Sparkle said "Its Sparkling time" and Sparkled all over the meta

I can also see a world where Acheron makes Welt relevant again (albeit temporarily since Welt still suffers from being a jack of all trades master of none)

The power creep is too much considering how generous they are with me losing my 50/50s.

Powercreep is when you get Qingque's late eidolons and pull Sparkle. Win big, keep quiet.

borderline impossible to make a turn based gacha without so much power creep, i expected this from launch

For those asking: Yes I made this video before I saw Acheron. 💀

IL got his d*gwater era when MoC effects go against him and Himeko had her time to shine in Fire weakness PF. Hoyo decides the meta, even if it goes against a busted unit, or elevate a bad unit

While you did touch on it with Blade, I want to note that he wasn't the only older character who gained a huge boost from Sparkle. In fact, at least two, if not three 1.0 5* units got huge boosts from her specifically. (As in, beyond just "Sparkle good", they get something unique from her that they really wanted) And they are Jing Yuan, Seele, and arguably even Clara. Jing Yuan has long been one of the worst units to pair with Bronya, for good reason; His biggest source of damage can't take advantage of Bronya's skill. However, Sparkle's skill buff lasts until the start of the unit's NEXT turn, allowing her entire kit to buff Lightning Lord. This is massive, and everything else Sparkle provides is the icing on the cake, especially since you can drop his Speed boots for attack for even more damage. And from what I've heard, the same applies to Clara. Similarly to Jing Yuan, Bronya's buff didn't last through Clara's counters, while Sparkle's does. While I haven't tried it out myself, I've heard good things about the combo. And, of course, there's Seele. She's the only Quantum 5* DPS, and Sparkle is tailored to support Mono-Quantum quite well, alongside being the final missing piece for the full 4-girl team. Combine that with her being one of the more SP hungry DPS who really appreciates Sparkle's Ult and technique, and the Mono-Quantum team has had the resurgence it deserves. (Most of the above also applies to QQ) Overall, while it's definite that Sparkle is almost certainly more powerful than Bronya, she's such a huge improvement to older units that it feels like she powercreeps less than she prevents.

Fiy Blade became better after Sparkle release not for her individually but because he makes good work of having both sparkle and Bronya in 1 team.

In my opinion old characters will still be viable and we have seen some characters will get better like Kafka with black swan they both got bumped up to a higher tier and topaz because she can buff follow up attacks so older characters like jing yuan and ratio can be bumped up and the end game content which can make old and new characters viable

I've said this before in many videos, yes, powercreeping exists. We cannot avoid it. However, sooooo many people in the community are taking it WAY too seriously as if the unit that was powercrept is no longer good. It's happened with Seele vs IL/Jingliu, and now it's happening with Sparkle vs Bronya. And I HATE that so many people take this so seriously and think that powercrept characters are terrible when they really aren't. We cannot avoid powercreep, but it's not something we should take so seriously to the point those powercrept characters are suddenly bad, because they aren't. The only reason why I think people are afraid of powercreep is because of the meta slaves that will harass you for not playing any of the meta teams. I speak from experience as a former Seele main. I'm now an IL main but I am still a very firm Seele believer. Same thing goes for Bronya. I don't use her as much anymore but I firmly believe she is an amazing unit.

I’m genuinely worried if the game is constantly going to get two 5*s every single patch 😭😭

blade is the best self sustain dps

Powercreep will happen when I wont be able to clear PF or MoC or any other endgame mode with older characters. So far we can still do it but they are constantly rising floor so who knows.

At some point, telling other people to "pull who you like" is a death sentence for you account... and I don't want that.

I mean tbf genshin release 4 star units are so incredibly op that mihoyo has yet to powercreep them 3 years after lmao. It was for sure a mistake on their part and made genshin players not have to care so much about meta since bennett, xiangling, xingqiu, and sucrose exist.

Whereas Genshin makes a small show of trying to stay balanced, you have Star Rail that really rewards pulling the right units and then continuing to pull. It's a different sort of frustrating. It feels impossible to get into alternate playstyles, unless you have a lot of money or luck... and I sure don't have the luck or resources to get units like Kafka or Topaz and build teams around them - and never being sure how soon they might get thrown into the trash. Getting Ratio for free at least helps ease the pressure a bit, but man, some of these units feel like bad choices almost immediately.

1:49 a yes the Cocolia first try difficulty 5. I still remember the absolute panic in Vars voice. Good to see you chose very good clips to show your skill

Instead of talking about powercreep i think the issue more is it is releasing characters too fast and i can't have them all 😔. Jade income is good but i feel like spending jades much too often.

The simple fact that my first reaction when I see HSR leaks is "WTF that's broken" is a testament to how insane the powercreep currently is. I've never had this feeling of awe in Genshin. The closest I had the same reaction was with Neuvillette, and that's just far and few from the characters that have already been released. Powercreep is fine, but HSR's progression is clearly drastic. I expected some units to maybe one-up old units bit by bit, but every new unit is just miles stronger than the recent one.

Insinuating that Seele got powercrept when I literally just 2-cycled the Meme Dragon in MoC 12 with a Seele mono quantum team all at E0 S1 (except for Lynx @E6) without any effort is beyond me. Seele scales really well with relics and she still nukes bosses and elites. While I do agree that Bronya got severely powercrept by Sparkle, the rest of this vid is just full of questionable hot takes.

I kinda just wish they’d slow down on releasing new characters. The resource and trace / level materials are okay, but relics are exhausting me. The meta feels flipped like every two months. I also wish they would avoid overstepping design space as much, like comparing Sparkle to Bronya. I don’t even think Sparkle *feels* like Sparkle to me. Her personality, powers, and story just doesn’t feel like anything she can do in combat, but this isn’t new in HSR. Like, sure action forward is a cool boost like bronya, but why ALSO crit dmg boost based off her own crit dmg boost, and why ALSO full team damage buff? And monoquantum is already fantastic. Like, why not imagination or fire harmony for her? Why not maybe provide a buff based on crit rate or speed, or EHR to give that “will ruin you” feel? Or maybe in ult, why not pester or ruin one enemy for a little attacking twist feel like Yukong? I feel like they could’ve made her mechanically as distinct and expressive as her personality and dropped the ball on combat design for her

My boy Arlan has been struggling to keep up 😫 I have him maxed out with BIS C6 and he can’t win 😢

As someone who started recently, i think theyre going too fast. Bosses with millions of hp, character doing 100 000, 200 000, 500 000 and 1 000 000 damage like its nothing in a game that's just a year old is crazy. Thats too much. Whats next? in a year or two they will be hitting for 5 million? I remember when i started genshin doing 50 000 seemed very good. I know its 2 different games but still. Its too much, too fast and its honestly ridiculous. Also its easier to keep up with the numbers when they are smaller when youre trying to calculate how much damage you will deal.

I don't have a problem with the meta inviting powercreep so much as just the fact that the recent endgame content seems and is so catered towards the new units. I think that aspect is a lot more pronounced here than in genshin, and eventually it might get bad enough that I straight up don't want to complete moc anymore, let alone pure fiction.

yeah the video that he showed on stream

10:05 its pretty unfair to compare those imo. Standard banner LCs can be bought for 30 pulls worth of starlight while limited LC cost around 80 pulls on average (up to around 150 if unlucky). Obviously they’re going to be way more powerful.

Great point at 12:43 regarding element restriction, until you realise acheron is coming next patch💀. I firmly believe the creep is going too fast too furious.

I just wait for the rerun banner and I will know which character is powercreep or not. If on the rerun banner, that character can still do a great job on their role, which is not a sign for powercreep and I want that character, then I definitely pull for them

I mean yeah definitely, in 3+ years of Genshin I've never once felt punished for not pulling a certain character... Yet I feel that every single day I load into Star Rail From the elemental weaknesses of enemies, to unnecessary gimmicks like Ratio needing debuffers to function, to the entire concept of DoT teams being tied exclusively to Kafka's kit... It's just frustrating that every new character seems to powercreep an old one while also saying, "I hope you have that other character as well, otherwise my kit doesn't work properly!".

New 'mechanics' like Pure Fiction definitely help units shine but sometimes they can get very biased with MoC's weaknesses and that is where it gets so obvious that "you need DHIL or Jingliu" because who else is a decent Imaginary/Ice DPS (before Ratio). I already gave up on the numbers and just collect all of the Nihility ccharacters and FuA ones. I like it when we can get more creative in team-building and even making use of older characters, not making the same DPSs stronger. Sadly except for Bronya and Fu Xuan none of the 5 star supports are characters I wanted to get so I am just chilling with Natasha anyway

The power creep is blinding fast for my taste. The hybridization of character roles and the growing emphasis on insane hyper specific lightcones is starting to get old. Oddly enough the game feels like it’s growing even more restrictive as more characters release because of the fomo nature of the character banners. With no way to pull for the core of teams or those characters that boost them, you are completely out of luck as they push the floor and the ceiling without even more reruns or deliberate reiterations of existing characters. Those completely necessary reiterations are the more traditional power creep which invalidates past investment, while the new characters force compliance as they make enemy stats increase to match their new dps/sustain power. People said “Genshin could never” but I don’t think they realized that offering a character and all these pulls is more necessary in Star Rail due to how the game is set up. If you can’t build FUN teams you leave. Period. But these are just one woman’s thoughts.

that's why you pull the characters that you like, not by meta, but character design, voice, personality.

23 seconds ago damnn..... Also excited for the new vid! They're always a treat~

Honestly my main concern with powercreep is the fact that even though they give us around the same amount of pulls as genshin they release way too many 5 stars every update. Add the fact that every 5 star seems to be better than the last and its actually more annoying than pulling for characters in genshin. Hell the next genshin patch has only one new 5 star who seems to be a sidegrade in terms of meta and three reruns so I personally can comfortably skip without feeling like i missed out on anything huge but thats not the case for HSR.

To know if a game has powercreep all you need to do is look at the win conditions. If the win condition is dealing 100K damage in 5min at the beginning and a few month later its 1M damage in 5min yeah games got powercreep 100%

Honkai: Star Rail has lots of powercreep since its a Honkai game.

Great video, I do want to mention the one good type of creep… animation creep so much of the new units have fantastic animations compared to old ones that it’s kinda hard not to pull for them 😂

I have an alt account with only Sparkle and Jingliu, who i couldn't get on my main. Despite having tons of good units on my main... my alt is feels nonsensically powerful, despite being a bunch of level 60s

You need to address another big problem that always come with powercreep, the FOMO. Do you remember how bad Loucha skipper feel when they struggle in MoC? Do you remember how many players curse Hoyo for putting ice weakness in every MoC rotation when the one and only good ice dps is Jingliu? Sparkle is currently sparking the same issue (no pun intended), everyone is afraid of newer character will consume so much SP that a Sparkle team vs non-Sparkle will have more than 20% damage different. To me this is the much bigger issue than the powercreep of each character, the "team comp" powercreep. i have to fight myself over saving for Firefly or dump everything i have in Sparkle banner just because Sparkle is too OP

Tbh, the comparison between bronya and sparkle is very intresting: I have both, and from using sparkle for a bit, I can say this: *sparkle is very relic heavy.* without spd, or a Eng rope, it’s harder for her kit to shine compared to bronya, and due to this, isn’t as viable, with half a set then when fully maxed, which is not the same for bronya, which even after I half-gutted her, causing her to lose a good deal of stats, she was still really viable, and better to use then my sparkle, which as you probably can guess, took the gutted relics from my bronya. I’ve said it in other videos about power creep, and I’m going to say it again: their both in the same field, but for more or less different use-cases. Bronya, can be compared to a knife: fast, portable, and good in most situations, but also weaker then other blades. Sparkle, is a fucking sword: strong, heavy, and able to do just about everything else a knife can, but harder to move with, dependent on the add-ons, being harder to carry around than a knife. While sparkle might be better in dps, her forwarding abilities arn’t as good as bronya’s, which also means that she needs high speed to counteract that debuff, and while she can do some duel dps, it’s just not as good as bronya, with her ult being team-wide, and her skill not being limited to just dps, and with stronger buffers coming out, Bronya’s jack-of-all-trades ability can be used better, instead of us just focusing on only dps. Personally, imma use both, but currently, most characters have a use in the meta, (besides arlan, due to being to self-inflicting… poor Arlan ;-;) and bronya and sparkle are the same. Even if bronya loses out in the dps department, she still has a cleanse, and 100% advance, making her almost future-proof as long as their isn’t anyone else who can do that, combined with constant standard pulls, which will slowly start to unlock all her eidolons. sparkle is also future proof due to her sp regen, and overall synergy with quantum and sp hungry units, meaning that as long as their are good quantum characters, she’s still viable. Really, while bronya isn’t the best, and her dmg is less then sparkle’s, her real potential is shown, because she really a wasn’t a buffer, her kit doesn’t really support that, she is a situational support hook, which was meta during early game due to the limited number to buffers. But however you might see it, this opens a lot of pathways for new teams comps, and tbh, I’m looking forward to it.)

I can imagine what robin will bring to the meta, as far as i heard, she will not powercreep any present harmony unit but will bring something new to the table. I am waiting for drip marketing in a few days.

After watching this video and reviewing my current characters, I have to agree... You did mention about black swan + kafka combo... I literally do that combined by having those DoTs member supported by E2 Ruan Mei and E2 HuoHuo. The damage especially from DoTs blows my mind >_

HSR is having the same model of Hi3, a lot of characters with a lot of powrcreep, this year HSR will have more characters than GI in 4 years with a lot of them are being powercreepered. That is their business model, more characters, more powercreep, more farm, more money.

If team with QQ as main DD can close Memory of Chaos for me its a sign that everything ok

6:49 I completely disagree, the advantages of having the ability to go twice are sometimes more than just more damage, characters like Jingliu and Blade specifically benefit from going multiple times to front load damage in their unique way. So a half advance and a full advance are not the same. In some situations they might be, but there's multiple situations where they're not and those situations matter

Don't let the Honkai players find out Genshin was the favorite child all along 🤦

Definitely. Most notable in DPS- we had seele, then Blade, then Daniel, then jingliu- 4 notable instances in just 1 version. Supports don't suffer from this as much, but it's definitely there- luocha and huohuo getting crept by Rian Mei to an extent. I fear that HSR might not live as long due to this Also, considering the best character on the game. In my opinion, it will always have to be a DPS who's at the very top, but supports will stay near the top for longer. That top spot can easily be congested by a stronger character, so DPS is stronger, but supports last longer

More than just power creep I'm more concerned about niche creeping, cause all the units so far have been taking up new major niches and I wonder how long it will take before they run out and will start making better copies of older units

and wonder if should go for sparkle LC or edilons or save. i diddent get dan dragon becuase forgot to pull the night before and so got sparkle and wondering if should go for more sparkle ((edilons/conslations) or go for her LC or go for archy hotty?

You guys are fighting about power creep meanwhile ever since jing yuan release he keeps getting indirect buff every patch

yes the star rail stans in denial and if you try to start a conversation in reddit they attack you.. They also attack you if you so much as mention the fast pace of 5 star character releases

I have a question, let's say I have Sparkle in my account, and i am super close to choosing the standard banner character at 300 wishes..... Should i now go for Bronya, or is she a skip now?

Considering that in Honkai Impact 3rd they introduced alternative versions of units like Seele and Bronya, and something similar already happened in Star Rail with Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, I think it would be much more possible for Mihoyo to give improvements to the characters, either with light cones. or improving skills, or that other characters obtain alternate versions. It would be interesting when we consider the multiple similarities in the lore and gameplay of Star Rail and Impact 3rd.

I love how you considered both how HSR is and is not experiencing powercreep! Its a very constructive and interesting analysis of the game that helps us understand on a deeper level. Very great video!

Star Rail having the “Honkai” name is already indicative of the future of the game’s Meta

I'd say they shot themselves in the foot by limiting gameplay to just 2 buttons and an Ultimate since it's inevitable that characters will start to overlap and obviously new characters will always be more broken than old ones.

About the version 1 units : They are still good, (Himeko and Herta in Pure Fiction being God Tier), but I agree that units that came out later are indeed more ease to clear with than them. Still, my Jing Yuan has no problems clearing MOC 12.

I think its fine releasing good supports that further strengthen older units. Sparkle and Ruan mei both provides ways to push Jing Yuan into a better light for example.

after Acheron i can confidently say YES YES IT IS!

I think hoyoverse learned how to keep older characters relevant while pushing for powercreep. Most of Fontaine characters breathed new life into older characters and overlooked reactions while being one of the most broken characters ever. Star rail is doing a good job with this earlier on. The only question is, how much can they hold on.

Blade is honestly my favorite Erudition character too. Glad Soarkle is making him better.

Every day that passes that "why no one plays Blade" feels closer and closer

I’m surprised Acheron is being mentioned in the powercreep conversation. People are going to be sorely disappointed by her e0s0 performance, and come back to the other hypercarries.

This is a major issue why Dr Ratio was given for free. The game's element restrictive combat enables players to have a ton of built characters. In Genshin, I can barely have any 5 stars and feel great since elemental reactions drive the game. However in HSR, I can have half the roster and still feel like something is missing

A thing I was surprised you didn't bring up when you discussed stealth-buffs/inclusivity was Relic Sets. The issue I always had in Genshin was that the majority of new artifact domains were heavily geared towards 2-5 characters, and if you didn't have any of those characters, there was never any reason to touch any new domains when you could spend all of your free resin on Emblem/Shimenawa or Gilded Dreams/Deepwood. Whereas in HSR, I've found that they've gotten much better at designing relic sets at a much faster pace, and a lot of these new relic sets give older characters a new lease on life. If we just go down the list of relics that were introduced from 10.0 to now: having a dedicated HP% 2 Piece for HP scaling healers like Bailu, the Hackerspace set was a godsend to most buffers, and its 2 piece effect is very plug-and-play. Prisoner/Grand Duke domain was obviously intended for Kafka and Topaz, but was a gold mine for characters who didn't have a good set previously, like Himeko, Sampo, Jing Yuan and even characters you might not expect like Herta and Serval. In 2.0, we've Pioneer, which has one of the most slottable 2 piece effects in the entire game (12% damage is the highest 2 piece buff in the game, and debuffs are bountiful in the current cast), and the 4 piece effect unlocks potential crit damage builds for characters who really had been left behind by previous relics, Pela especially. Even the Watchmaker set, while not incredibly useful on its own, does make room for double buffer compositions, as the Hackerspace buff doesn't stack with itself, which means you can have one buffer give the whole team speed, and the other give break effect.

doing the recent penacony quest and I can say that the power creep is real and is too much for casual players like me.

I understand the overall point of the video, but I think the examples of each new unit being better than the last of that type in the beginning are somewhat of a reach. Ye it definitely works for some units, like destruction being progressively stronger, but also Argenti is hardly definitely stronger than Jing Yuan, especially since this video is coming out After every guide video talked about how buffed JY for with Sparkle, not to mention new relics, game modes, etc. And HuoHuo is hardly definitely a better healer than Luocha. He's a far more comfy option for sustain, while she's slightly more offensive. Like I said I understand the point of the video and HSR is definitely subject to power creep, the the examples are definitely reaching for a consistent point more than they need to

I have Blade from the moment he was avaible to pull. I also have his LC, spend a lot of time to build him focusing only on HP. Currently my 9k HP Blade on E0S1 is my strongest DPS and I'm not going to stop using him. I will pull for Acheron in 2.1 and Firefly in 2.2 but I won't stop using Bladie just because there will be a stronger DPS.

Wasn't planning to roll for her but all these vids sold me. I had 17K steller jade saved for Achreon or Avent. Thank god I won the 50/50 and only got cut down to 8K so I'm not completely out. I surely have enough time to save back up right?

How come everyone keeps forgetting that Bronya has a cleanse? If you are going to mention Sparkle's utility besides the damage buff you should also do so for Bronya. Similarly Bronya is a regular warp character vs Ruan Mei and Sparkle being event warp characters. When Hu Tao came out 3 patches after Diluc, he became completely irrelevant but somehow "Star Rail's power creep is undeniably faster than Genshin's"?

As long as I am able to clear MOC and most other end game with my Jing Yuan then atleast to me the power creep is really far from close. As for Sparkle being more powerfull than Bronya I agree to that fact to a certain degree. Because I get more damage and Turns with Bronya if I make a good skill friendly team which is not rare. IL Dan had many teams even before sparkle which are still quite good. Sparkle just made him more easy to use. I know power creep is happening but not to the point were I need a new character just to clear something the game threw at me. Please don't over hype Sparkle. She is really good and opens up a lot more to player but she dosen't make other character's irrelevant. As for the LC yes those things are really power creeping.

Im doing fine running IL DH without sparkle and a follow up team with topaz+ratio/jing yuan,soo...im fine i think

I haven’t played the game in a while. But I’m hoping when I get back, my Jing Yuan with his BIS are still relevant

As an ftp who played at launch and is only starting to play again now, yeah the power creep definitely stresses me out more than it does in genshin. Bc while i know theres definitely no chance of me being able to beat all the end game stuff with being ftp, it very much feels like (community wise) that i SHOULD be doing those things, regardless of the fact that all of my favourite characters and all the ones i have are completely outside of the meta at this point

I think releasing the units that help with power creep still sketchy if those units are power creeping others themselves, also released on a back to back, like the first 4 units of 2.x. But my biggest worry is how stupidly overpowered Harmony has been since the beginning of the game. Hopefully Acheron helps alleviate that at least a little.

8:38 i'll never stop using my little grimlin QQ 👹✨

The thing is despite power creep alot of warly units are still pretty good. Like I have Jing Yuan and run him with tingyuan/sparkle or bronya and he destorys anything lighting weak extremely quickly.

I quite disagree with a lot of points made here. Especially calling sparkle better than ruan mei. It'd take too long to discuss this in a comment but what I'm trying to say is: I think hoyo are releasing characters in a way that makes them seem incredibly meta and strong at the time of release, however rather CREEPING them, releasing a unit that is seemingly more flexible than them and makes that unit relegated to 1-3 teams like huohuo being the best sustain + buffer and kicking fu out of MANY of her teams as best sustain unit for that specific team, also putting luocha in highly sp negative teams. Do I think sparkle crept bronya? No I think she kicked her out of teams where her SP negativity was too big a detriment and relegated her to SP positive or neutral non DoT teams like Jingliu and blade.

Suffering from success wave it hand and say "Hello".

You had me in the first half, not gonna lie, but… I definitely agree with the second half & final statement of the video more than anything else. A lot of the Powercreep argument that could exist from HSR purely comes from players who are not being efficient with their accounts or have some insanely horrendous luck.

I'm curious about opinions that Sparkle is keeping the idea of hypercarry teams alive, or that the game itself is challenging that general notion. The almost universal and general idea of the ideal team is a defensive/healer 2 supports and a dps but that was being challenged on the existence of dual dps, dots team, follow ups, etc. Acheron is a month away and his kit is restrictive if your idea of an ideal team is hypercarry like wise. Blade for example didn't shine as much as a hypercarry but when Jingliu came out it became a fantastic pair in the idea of dual dps team, that team lacked supports and then boom Ruan Mei. Topaz was underwelming if you looked for a hypercarry like IL but she is a monster for dual dps with follow ups attack There is a power creep but personally I am also feeling that different styles are being added in teambuilding outside of the traditional hypercarry that we know. It makes me wonder if the top damage should follow the notion of hypercarry with examples of IL or if it would be an example of powercreep that Acheron does more damage considering that it forces you to use 2/1 Nihility to reach that ideal

The problem now is not the unit strength, the problem is everyone just get released very quick and im out of jades

I quit star rail due to powercreep. I spent a lot of money in early versions but quickly realized that the same amount of money in Genshin got me units I still use several years later, while Star Rail’s ceiling shifts up every patch and keeping up with optimal teams without spending consistently is truly impossible. I was sad, because I like the game, but having to watch as my favorite characters either get every member of their optimal teams replaced or get overshadowed completely is not fun for me.

Herta was my favourite character since I played at the very start of the game so it really makes me happy she had her revenge. Maybe one day she’ll bring her 5 star doll version too and it’ll be insane

Im just pushing to see how far my hypercarry Clara(since day 1) team can reach before she gets powercrept out of viability xD

I don’t think Honkai is power creeping, the opposite, in fact. Bronya is still stupidly strong, Seele and Jing Yuan just became top tier again with Sparkle, Herta and Himeko got back into the spotlight with pure fiction, Tingyun is still essential to many builds. Starrail keeps introducing ways for older units to shine.

Powercreep is a nice clickbait and all but you could have waited till 2.1. since we're actually getting a 3rd lightning dps. But if she's not that stronger than JY or Kafka I guess it wouldn't be as clickbaity. Are we really going to act like standard banner characters are weaker than limited characters is surprising? Genshin had a better limited alternative to all their standard characters somewhere in 2.X and HSR will probably have the same. So far HSR barely has any power creep within limited characters. Jing Yuan has second highest damage ceiling second only to DHIL but instead he performs better in PF. High investment DHIL puts out more damage than JL. Argenti is better than JY but only in PF. In MoC his damage is even more backloaded than JY. Huo Huo is better for teams that need energy regen while Luocha is still the most sp positive unit in the game with debuff removal. Ruan Mei is a side-grade to Bronya and Sparkle for DoT and dual dps teams, and even Bronya has characters she's better for than Sparkle. Kafka's literally unable to be powercreep'd and if we get Kafka 2 electric bogaloo you'll just run 2 of them in the same team. Silverwolf didn't get powercrept yet and she probably will as soon as aoe version of her comes out. There's barely any power-creep and if you expected your standard banner character to remain as the best option till 3.0+ I'm sorry but that's just not realistic

I just realized I got Black Swan, been using her to clear MoC, without understanding what the heck she does lol. I'm to lazy to read. I just use attack, skill or ultimate when I feel like I should. Whether tbey are optimal, I have no idea.

11:14 wait why is blade better with sparkle? unless you're running double AA theres not much benifit runnign the two together

If you considered as a powercreep already then you haven’t experienced true powercreep yet. At this point, all characters is viable. Even 4 stars.

Yea I've been thinking in particular about Arlan and Herta lately, I think I have 5 or 6 of Herta's eidolons thank god because you really need them to make her damage increase, and with Arlan, I basically need him I realized because there's no other Lightning Destruction character (for now...) Both units have been at the bottom of the tier list for quite some time, they were the only "C's" until they demoted a few more 1.0 units. Herta's basically a Pure Fiction/aoe helper for the most part. Watching that hammer spin attack chip at a big boss with no other enemies is excruciating. Combine that with the fact that I could basically run Jingliu and one Hunt character, with Jingliu's skill and Ultimate being able to take three enemies at a time, I wouldn't be able to slot her in. Mono-ice team would be Jingliu, Yanquing, Pela/Ruan Mei and healer/tank. I guess if you use Elation Blessings in the Simulated Universe that increase followup attack damage, she'd be more strong there too, but if I want to boost someone with those, Dr. Ratio and Himeko/Serval (or Jing Yuan, which i don't have...) would be just fine. My biggest hangup with Arlan has to be that the Arlan-March 7th strat doesn't work with auto-battle, which, I like using auto a lot for calyxes and other content. And given that all bosses have three weaknesses, it's been hard to justify him when I have already-levelled units ready for the others. Plus, we're inevitably going to get a new Hunt and a new Destruction for Lightning that's going to make that even harder

blade with bronya and sparkle can be speed tuned to way of double pushing black swan and kafka is goated the only problem arrises when you want like black swan sparkle and acheron aka all of them then you don't have enough even with good luck of not losing

Bronya is my 1st 5* from standard banner and I still use her for the 2nd team. But I don't have second strong DPS to clear MoC: QQ and IL totally want Tinyun and Sparkle in their team. Ratio is also imaginary element. So according to the meta power-creep rule, I should pull for Sam 💀💀💀

I do suggest the idea of having new paths characters to make room for more versatility, combos and other factors that can alleviate powercreep. It's a similar idea i had to genshin with a possibility of them making a new weapon based characters (even though genshin barely relies on the weapon but their skills and ulitmate)

I personally set rules for myself when it comes to rolling, so I don't particularly care about how the game progresses or worry about not having enough rolls, I always have enough rolls. (Such as only Quantum/Fire characters, or only IPC characters)

8:36 I would not consider Qingque to be a “last option” character. The general consensus is that, if you have her E4 or higher, she becomes strong enough to contend with the likes of Dr. Ratio, and even more so if you have her E6. She seems bad on the surface due to the amount of investment her traces and eidolons need (not to mention her inconsistency with tiles), but once you invest she becomes ridiculously good and really consistent. Do note that this is not coming from a place of bias or favoritism. I do not main her, despite having her fully built, but I do use her from time to time (including in MOC) and recognize how strong she is when actually built. TLDR: Qingque is actually very strong, you just need to build her.

can you make a video whether sparkle’s lc is worth it or not?

I came back to the game in 1.6 after quitting in 1.1. To find out there had been so much power creep with the previous units was just frustrating. Because I'm so far behind on building and farming for characters, I have no way to beat the endgame content at the pace of a day 1 player who hadn't quit the game.