Yeah, I see no reason to draw such hard line in the sand between meta and favorite character. We can use the knowledge of the meta to make your favorite unit more effective, essentially just having proper game knowledge and apply it to any unit.
yep, and don't ever feel pressured to pull the likes of Neuvilette or Arlecchino... i skipped him for Wriothesley and obviously had to have Sigewinne also. i happily skipped Navia and Clorinde.
Yeah, there's a meta for everything. My favorite example of this is pre-Furina Eula. Hyperbloom was a meta option for her. However, if you were discussing hyperbloom, the Eula team was not meta.
The "meta" should just be seen as a guide for what to do when you dont know much or get stuck on a certain challenge, past that point ppl should focus on what brings them as much fun as possible.
Without meta there would be no endgame players since the game is boring af outside of it and there is literally 0 content outside of the abyss.. and theater ig but the difficulty is way to trivial. Do you not get that many people enjoy playing meta and clearing content faster than others? Probably a crazy concept innit.
@@boomerremover1514But what do you mean there is no content??? There's the whole wide open world to explore, environment's and music to take in, world quests, character quests, you can build a whole house in a teapot. If what people only want is action and combat, then why play an open world game in the first place??
honestly, i seriously respect people who play off-meta characters out of enjoyment. making a weaker character work because you like them or their playstyle is admirable and shows dedication that the meta-focused players potentially may never match
To me, as someone who enjoys theorycrafting meta in Genshin isn’t as much as the most 'optimal solution' but instead trying to figure out a way that every character can be useful to a team. Personally, my favorite character is Keqing and she isn’t the greatest character and yet I still try to use her whenever possible because she’s my favorite. I’m never gonna look down on someone who also use their favorite even though they aren’t the best character in the game. My second favorite character is Kaveh and I have tried to use him in a lot of different teams because that’s something I find fun. Trying to figure out where a character can be useful to a team even though they aren’t the best option.
Phenomenal overview and nuanced discussion on this highly contested topic! META is supposed to be “the most efficient,” not the only or correct way to play. I highly enjoy learning the technical capabilities of characters or gameplay mechanics and find META discourse exceptionally valuable…to a point, not at the detriment of aiding FOMO for what is becoming for many a gambling addiction or in the very least unwise financial decisions that also tend to turn people away from characters they either once loved or used and now see as pointless once a “more META” character comes out - missing the point of the journey and process along the way. I like the idea of “META is not everything, but it does help!” Our META obsession is becoming a restraint rather than a blessing and I hope others will come to a balanced position that can leverage information to their advantage without it solely determining the characters they invest in (my two cents: please oh please stop pulling characters you don’t even like!) or ruining their experience
Meta and tc is to combat fomo most casuals and casualbait ccs will overhype every new char released when you actually get into meta circles you relise most chars arnt power creeping anth and will help u cope alot easier with not getting them either because u missed out or thought they were super op
@@GeometryDash-gk2de So true. People seriously overestimate how much difference there is between various characters and teams. The vast majority of the time, you can overcome the difference between a meta and non-meta character with just a bit more artifact farming, or even just playing better (tighter rotations, avoiding attacks, more efficient placement, etc.)
@@GeometryDash-gk2de "overhype every new character", meanwhile I see plenty of ones that have lukewarm reactions to say Clorinde or Sigewinne. Or the fact Emilie was a major skip for everyone except those who picked up a great unit.
The gatekeepers and negative people are the reason why I scream "PLAY WHO BRINGS YOU JOY!" Too many times I've seen people telling others "ohhhh no you shouldn't play this character like that, you should play them like THIS." The newbies don't feel confident enough to talk back and thank them but they like what they're doing. Thank you for a being a calm and welcoming voice when there are a lot of fools out there who forget this is a game meant to bring joy and have fun with 🥰💜
Developers kinda sustains this negative attitude. Cause if abyss not being that hard nobody will buy shiny consts and weapons on their characters. So if you want to close endgame content with low/no money investments there is one way to do so, thats why meta still staying strong and meta players are everywhere
@@MaximKud I think if someone's struggling to complete content, and looking for tips it's nice to help them and show them how they could improve their builds or teams, but what @82ilerya is referring to are people who will jump on a person who for example like Aloy (😎) and tell them "Aloy's trash you suck lmao" :D
I'm not a meta player but I took time to understand people who are. The combat system is robust and nuanced and fun to calculate. 90% of Genshin's audience is casual. No-ones gatekeeping. Meta guides are an easy strieghtforward type of content to make. That's why theres so much of it. When it comes to content creators, I found meta players to be usually very courteous most of the time. More often I hear non-meta players ragging on meta players. Most meta youtubers usually say "play who you like." and "theres no right way to play". Also, learning the game mechanics can help you make your favorite character more functional and more fun in many cases. There's two types of "meta" that helps casuals. One where you make even the weakest teams functional, and the other is using certain characters and knowledge that will make your casual playthrough easier. People are out here enjoying the game how they want.
Who are these invisible people that keep telling other people that they "need" to play X character in the Y team, with the Z rotation? Ive seen way more people complain about these suposed "meta slaves", in order to inject some sort of ideal or agenda into what theyre saying, than I have of actual meta slaves forcing other people to play X, Y or Z characters...
As someone who started this game in 1.1 and absolutely refuses to play Xiangling because of how unfun she is to play (imho) I approve of this video in leaps and bounds. Here's hoping Mavuika will finally have good off-field pyro app and be enjoyable to play
I don't hate Xiangling but yeah, not my favorite. Despite having nearly 300% ER, I just can't get her burst unless I use Bennett as a battery, and frankly, I'm sick of playing teams with those two. I've started using Dehya for my off-field Pyro application and I just find it so much more fun.
Xiangling is fun with a lot of characters. She is the only character who puts a lot of fire from off-field. I'm not a "meta" player, but I'm tired of the Xiangling slander.
@jessica_glass it's not slander it's the fact the games almost 4 years old and she's still the only character who does what she does. We should've had a 5* option by now that's just my opinion
Omg the amount of times I have been told. “You shouldn’t pull for venti he doesn’t have any value, you should pull kazuha.” I want venti because he was the character that introduced me to genshin impact.
The thing is that not understanding the Meta, in many cases, end up with people not understanding the combat system, then they actually ask you for advice when they are struggling clearing stuff. Like, I see cases where people play Diluc with atk atk atk artifacts and Lava set, or they place 4 different dps with 0 energy recharge and expect sinergy. Then you advice that they need to use supports or consider team rotations when building teams or to consider proper builds, and then they get mad at you specifically because they can't take advice THAT THEY ASKED. Yes, there are meta players who will offer unrequested advice, but we have the other side of the coin: the players who don't understand the combat system, struggle to clear stuff, get mad at any advice you provide because it may involve using a character they don't like for comfort (like Keqing with Fischl) and then get mad with all the players who understand the combat system a bit
If you watch the whole video you'll realise I'm not even remotely against understanding meta; there are tons of positives that it brings to the community and the individual player, and it only becomes a problem when it becomes an obsession :) If someone asks for advice and the refuses to take that advice, that's an individual problem at the other end of the spectrum (and I too have run into people like that, I get it's it's frustrating as hell) - best not to waste your energy on them, just let them fail on their own!
This is probably gonna get me killed but i think meta is important to the game and heres why: People spend SO MUCH MONEY on these characters, every five star character that comes out should be at the very least decent, i remember when dehya came out people were extremely pissed and rightfully so, a badass character that was extremely hyped up to end up being that bad is actually ridiculous (she has more uses now in lyney teams and such which is nice but shes still not good, this is from someones whos 36*ed with her multiple times) And then people were saying “doesn’t matter bro waifu over meta” as an excuse for hoyoverse to sell us a terrible character was just stupid, because if they can get away with making a character that was barely even viable, who says they wont do it again And a lot of the time “meta players” are actually pretty chill and just want to help people, like say your favorite character is candace, and you wanna player her as a main dps, they can tell you that she has a better spot in teams as a sub dps and support (with like mualani arle and such), or recommend you xianyun for plunge, or some people may see your build, say its bad, then try to help you. That is NOT a personal attack but some people think that it is. My thought process is that if you have a character you love, why not try to make them as strong as possible? Not to mention that some of the most popular videos on youtube for GI is guide content, meaning clearly the meta is important if theyre looking up meta builds Then some people also say “meta takes the fun out of the game” when personally i think doing big damage is beating stuff fast is very fun. Playing for fun is nice to some, but Meta is also fun for others
Dehya was decent, even as an on-fielder, just most people wanted her to be something she wasn't, so made sub-optimal choices and/or were disappointed. And her team options have improved quite a bit since then, so it is even easier now than it was at her release, even allowing for tougher Abysses (she actually trivializes a lot of the "harder" things, like the dancing duo or consecrated beasts). That's coming from someone who has 36 starred with her every Abyss since her release. Though her kit does have issues, and is definitely weaker at C0 than it is at C4 and beyond. As far as helping people, phrasing matters. If someone wants to play a character, say, Dehya, as the on-fielder, you shouldn't say, "No, use her as a Lyney support. She sucks on-field." That doesn't help anyone. But if you explain that her multipliers are low, and that impacts this and that, and her dependency on constellations, and so on mean it won't be that effective, but here are things people do, this what you'll need for each option, with this and that up and downside, and this is what they can expect from it, then you're giving them knowledge, and letting them do with it what they will. Let people make informed choices, fully knowing the consequences thereof. Because most people's thought process is, "This is a game. I want to have as much fun as possible." And fun, unlike biggest numbers, is subjective. Don't tell them what is and isn't fun. Ask them what they think would be fun, then give them the info to help them realize that fun as much as possible. But as far as meta goes, I think there are toxic meta players ("If it isn't best, it is bad"). And there are players that don't care about meta at all. They just run around with whatever they feel like. And most players fall in the middle. An exploration character might want Furina so they can walk on water, Zhongli to ignore mobs and mine rocks, one of the anemos for vertical movement, and a speedy horizontal character like Yelan or Xilonen. That mix is a meta. And when it comes to content, same thing applies. I could play more meta teams than I do, but I'm a Dehya main, and I'm going to on-field Dehya on one side or the other, with the team I find the most overall effective for what I want to accomplish (crush abyss, no males, no circle impact).
"People spend SO MUCH MONEY" That's literally *their* choice, no one's making them. Gacha in itself is predatory enough, we shouldn't be encouraging the game to become p2w. I agree they did Dehya (and a few others) dirty and people are right to complain but again, for the longest time, Genshin has allowed us to care about who we like more than who's simply the strongest and it should stay that way. Powercreep sucks. "My thought process is that if you have a character you love, why not try to make them as strong as possible?" The meta view of "strong as possible" is minmaxing (which on its own is a pain, let alone when you throw RNG into the mix) and using the character for what it was designed for and sometimes people enjoy the character more when played differently. I for example built Mika as a physical DPS to buff himself, I also built EM Raiden BEFORE the introduction of Sumeru and dendro because I love her skill. 🤷 "Some of the most popular content in GI is guide content" But not all of it is meta. I actually stay away from meta focused guides, there are content creators who focus more on the casual/f2p side (*ahem**gestures to this very channel*) that give more realistic stat goals to aim for and let you know of many options outside of the bis. Finally, what can take the fun out of the game is the attitude of meta slaves, not meta itself. I agree killing everything super fast is fun, but I don't care how people build their characters and I don't shame them for it. 😂
Would honestly send this video to anyone who's new or unfamiliar with meta in genshin, it's so well done. I think it covers all sides of the issue in a very intelligent and comprehensive way. Thanks for another great video 👏 So I have a friend who's a day 1 player who doesn't care about meta (she didn't even know what it was until i told her, despite her having played genshin for years longer than I have) but she simply dreads floor 12 of the abyss. She said she often skips it altogether. And it's not that she's casual or doesn't know how to build characters, in fact, she's the most knowledgeable person I know about character kits and team comps, ironically. But she's a low spender and plays genshin to have fun, not for meta. I think it was very telling that even someone with the capability of building characters extremely well and who's had years to invest in characters dreaded floor 12 and found it a nightmare to play. As for me, I've been playing for about a year, I'm AR57 and a low spender, and I can't even get stars on floor 11. So my main problem with the meta focus is probably feeling like a failure since I can't 36* abyss, and I've had people assure me that this is my skill issue. And, well, maybe it is, but after hearing that 36*ing abyss is essentially easy, it's perplexing that my skill issue has made it feel basically impossible. I can't help wondering if the HP inflation in abyss has had a worse effect than anyone realizes, slowly increasing the DPS/stat check without actually increasing the difficulty. Which actually means rather than a skill issue, it's an investment issue, which is rather disheartening for someone who's favorite character is Wriothesley. As I said in another comment, there's been an outpouring of people defending hoyo's decision not to rerun him because cryo is no longer meta. I think it's sad that meta has become so all-consuming in the community that people would advocate for people to be *unable* to pull characters they dearly love and have a blast playing, just because they're not the most meta option out there anymore. It's disheartening as someone who feels very behind in the game and makes me wonder if I have no place in the community. I want to be able to have fun playing above all else, and it's sad to feel at times as if that's not a valid way to play the game.
It's 100% an investment issue, even with the best units and game knowledge our resources to level up are heavily time-gated. Most units these day are reaction based and/or HP based, taking them to lvl90 talent 8~10 is expensive and intentionally time consuming, making two teams to fill that criteria can be difficult. PLUS each abyss reset might lean into a different team archetype which means needing ONLY two teams is bullshit lol
@@snailwhale6673 Precisely!! For example my sister who also plays genshin pulled Neuvillette partly because she liked him, but also partly because of the people who said, "He's effortlessly broken, you just slap HP artifacts and prototype amber on him and you can solo 36* abyss." They completely left out one very crucial detail: Investment. It took her months of time and effort to improve his build and put together a team that actually made him feel broken. It was time consuming and expensive just as you said, and wait for an abyss with a hydro resistant boss and it's time to grind again with a whole different team.
I think ur friends builds and meta knowledge just suck and they're the most knowledgeable person you know coz u surround urself with casuals like you can make bad chars clear fast there r 3 other slots on the team and only 2 of them have to be good chars with any amt of synergy
@@GeometryDash-gk2de Okay, can you explain a character's whole kit in detail to me as well as their synergies with other characters and team comps off the top of your head? My friend can. She is absolutely knowledgeable, and her builds don't suck. Abyss is a stat check, not a skill check. But if you have a showcase of yourself getting all stars on floor 12 with a team that has no synergy, feel free to send me the link :)
@@MJDanvers 100% - abyss is such a stat check. There's a bit of skill involved - e.g. a few times I've shaved off like 30s by fixing my rotations - but if your characters don't have strong enough builds then there's only so much you can do, and the artifact grind is just neverending...
Building characters is needed even for overworld, so character guides are needed. The thing I find weird is that a lot of guides, willingly or not, create hype around characters doing a lot of damage or not, which is meaningless for the players who don't do abyss (the vast majority)
I don't think it is meaningless, though. I spend most of my resin in coop, because I like the variety it creates. But one thing you quickly realize there is that so many people have very underpowered characters. We're talking situations where stuff takes forever to die with a Kinich and Arl on the team. Where I'm typically better off not playing my Xilonen, because my playing a DPS will clear things considerably faster than a C2+ Xilonen with her weapon buffing a Neuv and Arl. So the relative aspect of A vs B still matters, when those players are off fighting something by themselves in their world. These players don't find everything easy. A good chunk of them probably do coop because they find it hard to do the domains solo. They can find certain of the ascension mat bosses hard. And this isn't a dig at them, because they're likely newer players, without the years of accumulated characters, weapons, and artifacts, as well as knowledge of tactics and combos that comes with playing for that long.
@@Axterix13 you might have a point, playing for a lot of time I can do domain with whatever team, but some can be hard for some players. I still don't know if that warrantees creating hype over what character is the best one and what character isn't tho. Plus there's the fact that this discourse is never really intentionally aimed at domain completion, but more so at abyss; people would recommend Venti more if they tackled domains and such
This is probably the best video on "the meta" that I have seen, and it isn't even close, but there is some things that that could have been handled better. Starting the video with the explanation of metagaming is really good, since that is where the term originally comes from. The term “meta” also later got the meaning of META = Most Effective Tactic(s) Available, and that definition is probably more used. Not differentiating between the two is a shame, since, in my opinion, the biggest problem with most “meta” discussions is that people can’t or won’t separate the two different meanings. I think that it is a huge mistake, because the META(tactics) change based on the metagame that you play. And when two people with different metagames discuss the META(tactics) it leads to all the problems that everyone has with talk about “the meta”. In Genshin this problem arises even when people talk just about the “abyss meta” since that still includes multiple different metagames with their own META(tactics). For example someone’s “abyss meta” means the META(tactics) in the metagame of clearing the abyss as easily as possible. For that person Zhongli and Kokomi might be the META(tactics). Some other persons “abyss meta” might be the META(tactics) for speedruning with 5 total 5* pulls(weapons + characters + cons), c6 4* characters and r5 4* weapons, only including the ones that you could get without paying. For this second person c1r1 Neuvillette, c0 Nahda, c0 Kazuha, and c6 Xiangling might be the META(tactics). So next time you(anyone who reads this) hear someone talk about “the meta”(maby in the other comments ;)), think if they are talking about the META(tactics) or the metagame. And if they are talking about the META(tactics), think for what metagame is that the META(tactics).
Whenever a new character comes out with crazy scaling it really just makes me less excited for them - I'm MUCH more excited when characters bring something new to the game which doesn't negate all the other characters I've already built, so when someone is literally just X but with bigger numbers it feels really underwhelming...
That's precisely why I dislike Chiori's kit. Yeah, sure, it has some unique parts here and there, but overall the character is just Albedo but better, because Albedo definitely wasn't already in a bad position when she arrived 🙄
@@Otherface You can consider Neuvillette in the same way. He is litteraly Ayato pro max and no I don't consider Ayato off field application like something unique enough. It is probably the first time, they just create a characters who is litteraly the same characters but more damage than a previous limited 5 stars.
@@Otherfacei like Chiori. i joined long after the Dragonspine Event and finding out Albedo's BiS was event locked i never bothered to know much about him. i STILL don't care much for him and certainly not now that Chiori exists. otoh, Xilonen is the newer one that i don't care for, i ended up getting her sig which Chiori CAN use, i will soon have 80 pulls and i will NOT try to get Xilonen which i will agree would be probably be "better for my account", but use it to get Uraku Misugiri. THAT will bring me more enjoyment than getting Xilonen - because meta doesn't...😊
@@Camelia437Neuvillette and Ayato play totally differently, and Ayato isn't so weak you can't play him if his gameplay is what you prefer. They're "literally" the same only by reducing them to numbers and meta and ignoring everything else, which an issue with the Genshin community moreso than Hoyo
I blame the fact that the biggest content creators (Tectone and Mtashed, for exemple) came from competitive pvp games, so they played Genshin (which is, again, a single player game) with this mindset of “winning” the game. Even terms like “hypercarry” were imported from League of Legends.
Vars as well. He grew as someone talking about League of Legends in terms of balance and overall design choices (among other things) and eventually added Gesnhin, the Star Rail and I think even ZZZ to his list and obviously, carries over how he talks about the game like he does about League
I’m also someone who doesn’t care about pulling a character because they’re meta. I pull for personality, gameplay, and sometimes design. But when I’m waiting for a character I don’t care if they’re good, I just care if they’re fun, like you said. I absolutely hate Xianglings gameplay and am waiting for Mavuika because I hope she’ll be a pyro sub dps thats actually fun to play. I pulled for Furina because I loved her from the beginning, but I don’t really like her gameplay that much, but I don’t regret pulling her at all, plus I do use her still bc I like her. About Cyno, I love his gameplay and will Stan him even tho he’s not “meta”.
I never cared about META in any game i ever played. May it be the console games, MMO or Gacha. I do whatever the hell I want and still am able to beat everything at a certain point. It's called having fun and loving to discover. Hell I don't even like most of the female character designs in Genshin. It's those people who always try to force opinions on you and get mad over fiction who are the problem
12:12 - 12:40 perfect summation of it all. Like people don’t even remember that Emilie exists 😭 all cause most of the community chose to skip her. like i get it you want to be smart with your primos but the difference in excitement is crazy. Especially given how good some of these more “forgotten” units can be. (Chiori, Sige, Emilie)
My friend pulled Chiori, said she was the worst geo unit... And she didn't even build her properly, just a random weapon that she thought fits, goofy ahh random artifacts AND level 60
Even non-competitive players have some interest in knowing what characters are most powerful (and potentially overpowered) out of the box, given the high cost of obtaining and building characters in both time and money. When you have limited resources, especially money, it can feel like a huge setback to spend ages and $$$ getting and building a character only to find out that they underperform and add little to your ability to build teams that can be played enjoyably. Also, the fact is that It does take significant baseline power to clear the abyss, and you may have even higher needs for baseline power of your teams if like many of us you're somewhat lacking in mechanical skill. The amount of gems you gain from full clearing it is significant over time, and not being able to do that because of being limited to underpowered or poorly built teams only makes it that much slower to get more powerful units that feel more fun to play. And as we have seen over time, the demand for baseline power level to get easy clears has increased noticeably over the years, and shows no sign of slowing down. So even units that seem "overpowered" today may feel merely adequate before long. That's not to say you can't make teams work or can't clear content when playing only units that you like, without regard to meta standing. But if you're struggling at all to accomplish something you want to do, or trying to figure out how best to spend limited time and resources to gain more power, then reliable commentary about relative standing of units in terms of power potential for investment is extremely valuable.
Thank you! I think I really needed to hear this! As someone who played briefly during 1.1 and came back during the later patches of Sumeru, I felt very overwhelmed by the constant talks of meta and felt pressured to play certain characters. While at the begining it was helpful to learn about teambuilding, later I felt like I was constantly seeking validation for my choices when ultimately, I just need to have FUN. Now that I have 1 team I feel confident about I want to play fun characters or characters whose design I really love, instead of forcing myselft to play with OP characters I don't even like.
Two days ago I was talking about getting Hu Tao’s c1 or sig and someone told me that ***Hu Tao*** was bad because Arlecchino exists. The meta slaves are unhinged.
I'm an avid Sigewinne player and my bare existence is enough for meta slaves to insult me in every way possible. I don't get why they do that. Why hate on characters who become more usefull/powerful as more characters release. I use game8 and similar sites to help me figure out how to build characters but when it comes to teams it really doesn't matter. I play Navia+Xilonen with Candace and Qiqi currently and I'm loving it. I have fun with the game by being free to chose what I want to combine :/ and it got me through spiral abyss and imaginarium theatre without problems. I can clear them with random teams and it's not a problem.
In my experience, general Meta, i.e. theories how to make the most damage across all characters in the game, is a kind of hobby, similar to speedrunning. People involved do that because of their interest in understanding the mechanics, not because they need it for something. Whether or not it is important to general player population then depends on the game - the harder the game, the more important it is. Besides this general Meta, there's also Personal Meta that applies mostly to new players who did not have enough time and resources to collect a lot of characters and these are interested in how to use the characters they have the best. Genshin is not all that easy game before AR55, using resources wrong may slow down your progress significantly in that phase. And surprisingly, general Meta is what comes to help in this phase as in case of Genshin it is not a set of simple strict rules "use these particular characters and these particular builds" but rather as a wealth of actual understanding of the mechanics and learning it allows people to improvise and replace characters in Meta teams with other ones that may not be as good but still can fulfill that role. Only when you're a veteran player with plenty of characters, you can completely toss Meta away and do whatever you please but the fact remains that the knowledge of game mechanics is still with you and you do use it and the ability to improvise you learned earlier to build your new teams, however non-meta you consider them to be.
As a veteran who's mained meta and non-meta, follows guides of builds, and tries playing ~60% of characters I pull at least for friendship, I'm someone in the middle of this mess. Meta is such a double-edged sword, it brings people to either embrace it or reject it too hard. It helps us have more fun and be efficient with our blorbos, but it encourages toxic attitudes in both sides. I really, really enjoy the gameplay of the two most powerful DPS currently (Neuvi and Arle), but there's been occasions where I didn't like and didn't pull for the top meta (Ganyu back in the day, for instance). If the next big one isn't of my liking, I'll skip. I remember being completely burned out of using Raiden in the rational hype era as I hated that team and I find her burst dull, but I needed the primos, and that left me with this deep life lesson. Lately, I pull for different DPS (5* and 4*, good and mid) to spice things up outside of the abyss, as long as I like the playstyle, but my main approach to "meta" investment in the game today can be summed as this: 1. Support Impact is the way. Get the meta-defining buffers before. Get the healers. Get the CCs. Get the off-field sub-DPS. Because those will be the building blocks for your faves' teams. If you really love the support or they're in all your teams, vertically invest in those and not the DPS you might abandon tomorrow! One of my best decisions was C2 Furina, and now every abyss all my teams but Arle's are fighting for her. Even in my f2p account I C1'd her in a rerun. My Kazuha is C2R1 too. I'd get more Xilonens too but not now, maybe in a rerun 2. Only do weapon banner if you can find use in both of the weapons. My Wanderer is perfectly fine with the communal R5 widsith, didn't risk for a donut not even Kokomi and Baizhu want. Don't feel pressured to get the perfect BiS with crit dmg 88%, most times you're fine with a second or f2p option. Also, only C1-C2R1 your main if you can afford it and aren't waiting for other characters, don't sweat over that. Fuck FOMO 3. Overinvest in your best non-top tier mains vertical and/or horizontally so they can get the most powerful they can be. I stubbornly stayed as a Xiao and Cyno main during their lowest, because I adore them and I still enjoy their gameplay after all these years. I minmaxed their builds until I was happy. I got them their BiS 5* polearms. I got all their best supports for their best teams, and found ways to work around their flaws. I try to do the abyss with either of them or both first as a challenge if the lineup was good for them. And mind you... with time, they've gotten much better with buffs and teammate choices that solve their problems! Cyno in quickbloom might not be Alhaitham tier but his team clears, and in one abyss cycle he was much better than my Neuvi team if you can believe it. Xiao's current triple anemo team is simply AMAZING and my favorite next to Arlecchino mono pyro. Both guys feel different to their old clunky selves now. The teams are expensive, but I'm willing to spend even money (150€ for Faruzan cons...) 4. Build someone with a non-meta build and run around with it without caring if it's "wrong", it's good for the soul. I have a C2 crit DPS Venti on 2p VV 2p atk%. Again, I have a 900 EM C2R1 Kazuha for a VV-slave swirl boy so MIGHT AS WELL make him stronger in other ways. I love it. He's so chaotic. I "had a dream" about Chasca's bow and I think I'll be getting it for him just to be a menace
Great video 👍 So far, I have enjoyed most all meta characters’ gameplay, so I enjoy pulling for the strongest characters. There are also a handful of “mid” to “weak” characters I really enjoy such as Heizou, Ganyu, Ayaka, Diluc, and Tighnari that I try to use just for pure enjoyment. I have my c6 Heizou with c6 faruzan, and I am so close to completing Melt Ganyu, the first team I ever wanted to build but I’ve lost my 50/50 for zhongli on 2 separate banners, once I get him my account will feel complete and from then on if they’re meta I’ll pull, and if I enjoy them I’ll pull. Maybe I’ll even pull on a weapon banner one day 😱 but I wholeheartedly agree with the disheartening fact that some meta players are mean and look down on players who want to play unoptimially just for fun. We should always be supportive no matter what, it’s just a game 🤷♂️
Pretty much agree, and I always put it like this: meta shouldn't tell you who to play, it tells you how to make the characters you *want* to play better. It's more accurate to say theory crafting(TC) is the beneficial part of "meta". Whereas the meta itself is the application of TC principles to shorthand decide which characters are good. Everyone benefits from TC, but not everyone should follow meta. And it's unfortunately the gatekeeping type people that are loudest in trying to dictate how other people should play.
Lovely video as always! I learned more about the meta than I already knew. I'm in the same camp as you where I don't really pay attention to the meta... but I do experience FOMO when characters (i.e. Furina) are used in SO many teams and seems to be instrumental to making certain teams viable.
I have the 'issue' that the characters I wanted to pull for either became meta ( Neuvillette ) or already were meta ( Alhaitham ). But I pulled them bc of character and design. And felt the need to make them and their teams the best they could be. And I'm sure both will exit the meta at some point and I can finally play them without people accusing me me of being meta obsessed 🤦♂️
I pick my characters by design and how much I liked them during the story. I have a decent number of meta characters but try and run them in non meta ways. Like my quickbloom team is very much still a version 3 design and it'll stay that way cause I love every character involved
Great video. I just finished the new Abyss with the newly increased HP and started wondering about one of the things you touched upon in the video. As the hp keeps increasing, it will become increasingly difficult to downright impossible to clear Abyss with fun off-meta teams. I only just started being able to 36 star and while that's great, I was looking forward to building most of my characters and playing them in the abyss, too. For example, Yanfei is one of my favourite characters, but there is pretty much no point in even bringing her to floor 12 because she just...can't compete. Another team I really want to build is freeze bloom with Barbara. And I have seen people clear abyss with both Yanfei and Barbara but as the hp increases, I'm not sure if even they will be able to do it anymore. But yeah. Abyss is the way it is. With new super strong characters coming out, they will keep increasing the hp. I just wish we had something....different. I like Imaginarium Theater, but I feel like the kind of fun content I would want is still lacking. I want some kind of dungeon where you have to run, climb, solve puzzles, kill enemies, etc. Like a timed exploration thing. Idk. Something.
100% feel the same - Yanfei carried me in the abyss for a long time, and mine is still strong enough to clear at the moment, but it does feel like it's slowly slipping away. The way they could "fix" that while still increasing HP is to release more overpowered *support* characters, but that kinda sucks too... And yeah 100% feel the same wanting something different. What I really want is WuWa's Illusive Realm... it's just so fun. You pick a character to start with, and then you explore a series of domains (like Imaginarium Theater, except that each section is a little chunk of explorable world with a couple of items hidden and some enemies to fight). The important part: your character starts off fairly weak, but as you progress through the domains you collect powerups which add new abilities to your character and multiply their strength to insane levels. The enemies get stronger too, so by the end of it, imagine that you'd be doing 400k per charged attack with Yanfei, fighting against some souped-up boss who is balanced for that level of power. Would mean that you could use *any* character to clear it, they'd just get their own crazy powerups, and it's just so much fun!
So much of what you brought up in the negatives were the same issues I had experienced when taking a break from Genshin and jumping into Nier Reincarnation when it came out (RIP, left us too soon); that "the Meta" was the end all be all for people and that ended up creating a bland experience of everyone just trying to beat content with the same exact methods. It wasn't until the last year of the game that high end content started getting REALLY weird with fight and combat gimmicks that you couldn't just steamroll with your most powerful units and weapons. We were being given content that required a lot of problem solving and creative thinking, and as a result players started coming up with the most bonkers and sometimes funny ass hell team compositions for clearing content. Developing that mindset and a deeper understanding of my "toolbox" works perfectly well in Genshin Impact and often thrives in it. It's that mindset which led me to realize I could consistently have Neuvillette's charge attack by giving Sigewinne the Sacrificial Bow to make 4 additional water droplets for Neuvillette to use. It also helps me build teams that normally depend on Bennett and make it work without Bennett. Very useful because there's only one Bennett and you can't just use him for both Spiral Abyss teams. Also with the introduction of Imaginarium Theater, that's made team comp problem solving skills all the more valuable with how you can't rely on creating perfect teams and instead have to work with whatever they give you and sometimes think really weird and outside the box. At the end of the day, I'm having more fun going "Wow this unhinged chaos team worked great" instead of "Alright I cleared this content faster than anyone else with the same 3 units".
From what I've heard of some guidemakers and theorycrafters, the primary reason they want to explain a character's combat strength to the playerbase is so that everyone can make informed purchases of characters, constellations and weapons, since as we all know, those can get VERY expensive. That certainly is a noble reason. Additionally there's traces of meta talk left from people who have played other gacha games with leaderboards and rampant powercreep that left only the most recent characters playable, before they played genshin, that brought along the focus on meta as baggage from those previous games
That's why I subscribed to Your channel. I've felt really bad, some time ago, that I never passed the Abbys and my characters are much more weaker then what my friends had on their accounts... but they were shocked that I have 100% exploration on every region and finished most quests. I don't really play this game for fighting, which may be weird to some, I enjoy going around, talking to npcs and making cute space in teapot for my favorite characters. That's also why I like how You talk about characters personality and story in Your tutorials. I've build Xiangling, coz everyone keeps praising how meta she is, and builds some good teams, but it's still much more fun to me to throw together 4 characters that, I think, would like each other.
I think it should be noted that the Abyss total HP chart can be slightly misleading, as there are multiple other factors that influence Abyss difficulty. For example, a higher total HP that is shared amongst a lot of different enemies will be easier to deplete with AoE attacks, compared to a lower total on a single boss. Also, while total HP may be lower, other gimmicks, like invulnerability phases or elemental shields, can often increase the total time to kill more than if they had greater total HP. There's also the blessings to consider, such as in the most recent Abyss, which may have had higher total HP, but also had an extremely strong blessing that made it overall fairly easy compared to past lineups with lower total HP. For the most part, I'd say that Abyss is probably not being balanced against what we players consider meta teams. HoYo datamines everything players do, so they are likely trying to balance Abyss against the "average" player that attempts it (as it would appear most players do not). As the game matures, the roster develops, and more powerful team archetypes emerge, the Abyss must increase in difficulty to stay relevant, but no individual character or team is going to move the needle significantly. After all, players have been speedrunning Abyss floors in under 15 seconds for years, the performance ceiling has never been a factor in balance, before.
good take. on top of that, some "meta" characters are shoddily designed (e.g. the missing physics integration of the hydro pump) but people hype them up anyway because of the numbers, giving the wrong feedback to the developer
Two of the most wholesome subreddits are Yoimiya and Eula mains, both of which these characters are considered "trash" or niche in their class. But hey, I'd take a wholesome "wow that's a great build. welcome!" community over people who constantly over their throats of who's the better pyro polearm dps. (I'm looking at you Hu Tao and Arlecchino mains)
Meta matters for those of us who care about the meta. There are plenty of meta sheep who make fun of casual players for using suboptimal setups, but there are also an equal amount of toxic casuals who make fun of people for chasing meta characters and optimal builds when they "dont need to", with the common sentiment of "you can clear with anyone". Casuals just want to play their favorites, and Tryhards dont want to settle for "just clearing". Let people play in the way they enjoy.
I am fairly new to Genshin. Started in 4.7. When I first started watching all these guide videos, I felt quite pressured to have certain characters...But I now decided to pull whoever I enjoy playing. Everyone has been hating on Chiori, but I pulled for her instead of Xilonen, since I prefer Chioris play style, character, and design☺️💛🧡
I only acknowledge the meta when I want a character that is gonna last and be enjoyable or work with low investment. Other than that it doesn’t matter at all but many units in this game are simply more fun than others. One of the reason I tried pulled for xilolonen is because I’m almost always gonna have a reason to use her. As long as a character has a reactive element like pyro or hydro she can be used on it. So Im always gonna have a reason to play her and even if she isn’t the best option she’s an option that works. She is for me fun, and she will always have a use. Also not needing extreme investment to be usable is a very valuable because you only have to get lucky once not 2-3 does make characters better to pull on. But to make a long story short, I would personally try to pull characters that are fun and that won’t be useless in a patch or 2 and ones that make you want to play more. Either Personally or because it allows you to be creative with teams or fun exploring, fun factor should always be the most important thing to consider.
To be fair, many players will pay attention to the meta. At the very least they will pay attention to what character/weapon are considered to be good. We like doing big dmg numbers after all. Despite that, i still encourage ppl to just build what you have and like. For example, i like Chiori and many people doomposting her at release because she only do dmg and offers nothing beside that. So i just build her like what she supposed to do, doing dmg and put her in a team that at the very least doesn't get ruined by her geo attack. Like Arlle double geo.
I'd say follow the meta at the start and get a few key supports. After that, you eventually hit a point where you can do whatever you want. I use a shenhe wriothesley plunge team sometimes. Thats definitely not meta, but it does enough most the time.
Yeah, the meta is why I took extended breaks three times so far. From 1.2 to 1.5, 2.3 to 2.7, and 3.3 to 3.7. All because I didn't have the meta characters and they drove me out of building my Bennett and Xiangling, who would later become the best characters to date. Because of the meta fanatics I got burnt out and made me build non-meta characters out of spite. I remember back in the day when I was kicked out of co-op for using literally anyone but Diluc, Keqing, Klee, Xiao, and Hu Tao, especially if I want to use healers or supports, back in the 1.0 versions because they're the meta DPSes. Even back in Sumeru patches I got kicked out for not having any of the meta Dendro characters, hence why I hate co-op and combat events ever since. It's also why I mained Diluc and Beidou from 3.0 onwards up until I got Arlechinno. Those meta freaks should go and touch some grass, ffs.
tbh ive been playing this game game almost since launch and i started looking at meta since like half of fontaine patch? and i still dont care enough to pull for someone i dont like, first and primarily there are characters i want to look at, get their lore, listen to their voicelines and have fun with in every aspect of the game, big numbers are fun but if i want to build some 4* just for shit and giggles then i will do just that also thank you for saying nice things abt imaginarium, i’m glad someone else see the fun horizontal building can bring to your account
I think the emphasis on meta is partly in due to players not wanting to waste resources and primos building characters that are suboptimal. Also from my time with Genshin, I find people who do make content around the meta do so to help players build efficient teams to make the most of the units instead of having to sink hours and primos for something that doesn’t give them the same results as what’s recommended. It’s just the sense of “am I playing / building this character correctly”. There’s no one saying you can’t do whatever you want with your account but there are a plethora of people who might not understand how a character should be built or teams they shine in especially if they’re having difficulty clearing content. Personally, I follow the meta so my favorite characters can be at their best, which I think is what everyone wants at the end of the day regardless if the characters are viewed favorably or not.
Not for everyone of course! but some people do miss the challenge. Obviously anyone wo decided to c6r5 laid their own bed, but there are those of us who generlaly stick to c0, yet the difficulty difference between end game and the res tof the content is so steep *an optional* ( *you* don't have to enable it) difficulty setting would be very welcome from time to time!
@@saurusness The whale aspect didn't even really matter. Like my Ning, a day 1 four star, in WL8, would obliterate almost every camp in the open world solo in seconds. No other other characters needed. And that's mostly due to how long I've been playing the game, between more primos earned/spent, more artifacts farmed, and so on. Sure, she's using Yae's signature, but that's just an R1 weapon in the hands of someone with Yae. And if I farm up the new geo set for her, she'll be doing that at WL9 as well. Now, WL9 definitely helped in this regard. But it really isn't enough. I'd like the option to raise my WL up to, well, 11, probably. No cool down on changing it, though. Just don't have it impact the rewards, and let me change it at will. Just in case I have visitors to my world and I want to lower it for their sake, but then I want to be able to up it again the moment they are gone. Also, don't lock out people due to my increased difficulty. If they want to visit, let them.
8:30 My account has been around since 1.2. I stopped playing around 3.5 (after Shenhe’s rerun), as by luck was so abysmal that it left me with one singular Ayaka team, that I couldn’t build due to artifact luck, and was tied to a dying element (Cryo). Mualani was the character that both pulled me back to the game (with her design) and kept me playing the game (with her gameplay, which I find fun). Also, Hoyo threw me a bone with Xilonen and gave me her on a 50/50 at 17 pity, which definitely helped. That said, I still only have two functional teams, one of which is still the Ayaka team which, while I have managed to improve significantly since I came back, is still too weak to allow me to 36-star the abyss (highest I’ve gotten so far is 32). I am generally the type of person to play the characters I like, but build their teams towards the meta. For instance, a semi-theoretical overload team I’ve had in the works since 2.5 (when I got Yae Miko) has been missing Yoimiya in particular for a very, very long time. Even though Yoimiya has been powercrept, I’m still going to save my primos for her eventual rerun. The only thing of substance that’s changed since the team’s inception was that the pyro support got switched to Chevreuse, for fairly obvious reasons. Yoimiya’s seat in the team has been reserved since 2.5, even down to the name I gave it, “Firework Show”.
I think that the openworld is not as hard as the abyss because it's designed to be manageable with starting characters (that's why they often give us clips has 4 stars and the starting characters when they show a new map like Sumeru teasers) but I really likes how they added the local legends to open world with some of them being even harder than the abyss which gives you a reason to maximize your characters
I have waited so long for a video like this. I thought I couldn’t be the only one who feels like this. I love watching TC content, because I think it is interesting. But sometimes it feels way too stiff.
I personally will never understand the Kaveh hate (in regards to his kit). I understand his flaws and realize that my favorite teams are largely being carried by other characters, but my best Nilou team uses him as the driver and it's so fun to play. I wouldn't even kind of put him at the bottom of the 4-stars list.
I'll make a Kaveh video eventually to fully explain why I dislike his kit, but to summarise; it's one of those kits that work against itself, while not adding any major benefit to any team you put him in, similar to a couple of other characters. I love him dearly as a character, and so I worked hard to find way to make use of him (and of course in OW you can absolutely use him), but he is one of the few characters whose kit I do think deserves its reputation 😔
@@saurusness Can't wait to see it. 😊 And please know I meant no disrespect. Your opinion on Kaveh is definitely the popular consensus, but I've just never felt it personally, whereas units like Candace? Yeah, totally agree with the hate.
@@crimsonseiko Didn't come across disrespectful at all 💜I just didn't want anyone to think I'm a "hater" - tt makes me happy there are Kaveh appreciators who also genuinely enjoy playing with him! 😊
I love kaveh and for people who also love him I advise playing him in this team: (Kaveh-Furina-Xianyun- C6 Bennet) yeah it's a team that doesn't use Kaveh's personal kit but it is good enough to 36 star the abyss without problems ^ ^
As someone who NEVER get into doing the Abyss regularly and even cannot get motivated for the theater either, the only meta I am interested in is the meta around the characters I actually enjoy. Most Meta character I really do not care about because they are just not to my liking in terms of gameplay or design. I am also not a fan of having to constantly swap characters every second, so I like to play with one Main DPS and then sub DPS for the rest But give me a good set up I can do for a character I actually want to play? Sure!
The abyss has grown so easy that my personal meta is just seeing how much damage my Ganyu can do in a single hit. 153k (no melt) buffed by C4 Xilonen and C3 Shenhe now.
In the end, it's important to know the META so you can make your team better even if it doesn't have the best characters. My favorite example of this is F2P Keqing's channel. No one is seriously going to say Noelle or Keqing are top-tier DPSs like Neuvillette or Arlecchino (or Alhaitham). However, if you know how to play them right, give them the right supports (some of which are META), you have 36* Abyss clears consistently.
11:48 I also love Kaveh. I use him in Nilou team, but personally his "best team" for me is Kaveh, Fischl, Xianyun and Furina. I call it Non-Quickbloom, because it has electro, hydro and dendro but the only hyperbloom trigger is xianyun's Swirls, which aren't that often. Yet Kaveh's skill can pop the seeds to help him heal more and not let the seeds go to waste. And his skill has a perfect CD of 4 plunge + skill + 4 plunge, it's very satisfying in my opinion. My personal disappointment is Chongyun. I don't want Shenhe and I refuse to use Bennett/Xiangling, and I've been trying teams that should work with Chongyun (as a supp or plunge dps) but it just isn't enough to clear abyss. I'm hoping Mavuika will buff him, honestly. Like, imagine Mavuika buffs everyone's ATK, so a team with Chongyun, Emilie, Xianyun and Mavuika, she'd buff literally everyone's damage/plunge buff output. I hope it's something like that.
The only reason one should pay attention to meta is if you cant fully clear the endgame modes. As the extra pulls come in handy from clearing the bi weekly content loop. But if you have been clearing for ages, meta doesnt matter. Meta is just advice on which characters will help you clear the endgame.
idk, I play genshin three years now and I like building characters more for being able to use them in an open world and never for the abyss. I even regret for once pulling for the abyss, back in the days when ayaka was meta I pulled her just cause everyone had such a positive opinion on her but now I barely use her even in the open world. more fun dps characters have their teams preset but ayaka doesn't cause I just don't like her anymore for now. the more I think of the abyss the more I see why the devs one day said it's frustrating some players, it does frustrate some players, like, I clear anything open world and theatre related excellently but floor 12th on three stars? nah, guess pay to win, girlie... if the abyss had no primos I wouldn't even touch it but theatre on the other hand is so fun with how you have to manage a limited roster of chars and use reactions you probably don't use every day. the current one with overload and mono geo?? a slay, mono geo is my strongest team just because I've spent years for itto's team and he was my first ever limited 5 star and a dps who I love using even now! the abyss seems very dull, if your teams suck for the current one you literally can't do anything. don't even try telling me "but some four star teams are still able to clear it", in how many attempts? in 30? thanks, once I have a roadblock in the abyss I just quit and never come back. the last time I tried to fight till last star with actual passion ended up in 35 stars. just one left for a satisfaction. but I tried and tried and tried once again. I couldn't just anything, on my acc that team couldn't be adjusted any further, unless I get a signature weapon for a dps who I care about a bit less than about my main who also is sigweaponless... you know what I gained from these 35 stars? disappointment. not the satisfaction for finally being so close to a win. but I still hate it that I couldn't do anything to it. retrying the abyss this many times seemed like madness and I don't want to come back to such a state. I fear probably my first 36 stars won't satisfy me either, cause in the next phase the enemies might be even harder or not suit for my acc. I mean I'm definitely not the target audience for that endgame mode
Great balanced video! I think the issue is one extreme to the other. Meta is useless in Genshin so it is far more realistic to distinguish the IMPLICATIONS of dmg comparisons = what difference does it actually make? Is the goal to succeed the challenge or overcome a self-imposed challenge? Is it speed? Is it navigating boss mechanics? Are you on mobile/console/pc? Because if the optimal team only shaves off a few more seconds in Spiral, then it's not really that big a deal - the fastest speed is not necessary - only if a season of Spiral is so hard that even veterans are struggling to make time, but even then, the issue is not just generically speed-running, it's usually due to the boss mechanic (moving bosses, AOE vs single target, shields, etc.). Instead of "meta" there should simply be dmg comparisons/utility depending on the need. On the one hand, play whoever you like, BUT with the honest caveat that it might require more investment/resets/skill to beat harder content for new players who don't have a lot to work with at first. On the other hand, knowing what teams/characters do the most damage overall, is great, BUT there are categories of dmg to consider depending on the context. DMG discussions also don't make you superior because if anything, OP builds/teams requires less of the player... show me you beating spiral 12 with C0 4*s on 4* weapons, then you can act all high-and-mighty lol. The irony when they proceed to tell other players: "skill issue." Genshin is not a finger dexterity contest. Some players like strict, calculated rotations and using hacks like opening the handbook UI to speed up ultimate animations, others like me like a bit of unga-bunga chaos which is why I like Navia! Theory crafting and "meta" analysis can be really fun for people who enjoy the "math" of the game and see kits&calcs as a puzzle to solve. Dmg comparisons are actually useful for most players who likely have less ideal artifacts (ha). Plus the characters were designed with specific kits and math so to act like it doesn't matter makes no sense - knowing how they work and what things boost their dmg is not in opposition to playing who you like, because it can help you maximize the character you like. So being anti-optimal dmg is just as ridiculous as being a "meta slave." Both extremes try to make the game into something it was never intended to be. Genshin is not a competitive leaderboard combat game, but combat is still a core part of the game so it's not just a casual open world story game either. Enjoy both or prefer some aspects more than others, that's fine, but your fav parts of the game are not superior to the aspects other players prefer.
I would experiment with more teams if it was possible to do that without first grinding for a month to build a character that might not end up working. I'd like to try out DPS Kachina, but I'm already putting all my resin towards other characters atm, so it's not possible for me to experiment with that. I've also always wanted to try out a proper freeze team, but I simply don't have access to the characters I want to try. So I'm stuck with what I have and I'm incentivised to pull for the meta characters since I still want to beat the hardest content and I don't have the primos to afford any bad pulls
So, I really don't care about meta but I agree that it's something that has a relevant influence on where the game is going and how a lot of people play. So it's important to not ignore it completely. The only thing that really irks me about it, is when players who care about it are looking down on others who don't. Second to that is people ignoring characters because they're not commonly acknoledged as strong. I see people trash-talk characters (for example, current banner 4-star Dori) to new players. But with the gacha, sometimes you gotta work with what you have. And surely, if you enjoy the game and want to give advice to others, maybe don't bash the characters that someone has got to work with? I've reached the conclusion that playing what is fun to me is what's most important and watching your streams and videos has definitely influenced that! Anyways, thank you for your thoughts on this topic. Well thought out and entertaining to watch 🥰
This isnt directly related to Genshin, but from a discussion I had with someone about the upcoming version of HSR and the limited 5 stars in that version. They said that there was only really one character worth pulling in that update, namely Aventurine. I do think Aventurine is probably the strongest character there, and the one that is used in the best teams, but here is where Genshin comes into the picture. Saying someone is weak, or especially saying someone isn't worth pulling is really demotivating to hear about a character you like. A strong character doesn't necessarily mean a fun character, and a weaker character doesn't mean a boring character. Genshin is a game, and its meant to be fun, if your main source of fun isn't doing the most damage possible, then you are better off getting the characters you have fun using, whether that is because you like how they look, you like their story, or you like how they play. Whether a character is worth pulling is all up to the individual player.
Once I'm done building my Navia team I'm going to start building Mualani. I got her so that I could do a dual-DPS setup with Yoimiya, using Yoimiya's burst to apply pyro off-field for Mualani's vapes. This will definitely not be meta, but I have an excuse for building a team around using Yoimiya's burst, so that's good enough for me.
I got so excited because I can finally get Hu Tao in the second half of 5.1, she hasnt had a rerun since i started playing, I've met her ENG VA, i love everything about her so im sf hype but ofc as soon as I say that on twitter, discord servers im in etc I got like a dozen annoying people going 'Oh just wait for Arlecchino Hu Tao's a waster, Lyney is so much better Hu Tao's not worth your time- NO, I want Hu Tao I'm going to play Hu Tao lol thats the literal best part of this game its using your fav characters
YES get your Hu Tao!! Hu Tao and I had a rocky start but I grew to love her 💜 the funniest thing about these people is that for a very long time Hu Tao herself was the ultimate meta pyro DPS, and people would tell others not to get Yoimiya or build diluc and deifnitely not Klee are you crazy, because "Hu Tao is better than all of them put together and the only one worth playing" 😂
@@saurusness I hope I get the VA luck from meeting her English VA😭my thought process is always gonna be, yeah Arle may be better then Hu Tao now, but that doesn't mean Hu Tao suddenly gets worse! What's the difference gonna be? I clear five seconds faster? I still get the same amount of primos😅and you know what, after Hu Tao im going after Mavuika bc i LOVE her but then 1000% Yoimiya is my goal, why? BC ITS YOIMIYA AND SHES ADORABLE i dont care if she's only good in single target😭
Meta in genshin to me means : When im lazy i pick my best team clear abyss 1 try no effort at all sometimes speedrun under 2 minutes total both sides And when i want to play any char, i can build team around any char i want n still can clear abyss
I pulled for kazuha... and while he's fun for the specific purpose of clearing leylines, otherwise i still regret pulling him. "He buffs so much" and i literally do not care. My abyss teams don't use him at all and I don't do showcases. Granted I also still can't 36 star lmao but even my best teams (neuvi carry, diluc plunge, hyperbloom) just dont use him. Also i dont like the feeling of having pulled a character "for nothing" when they eventually get powercrept, so i really, really prefer just wishing for characters that i like.
The point is that the cost is too high. Whether it's the cost of acquiring a character or the cost of building them. The expectation of 0.6% is low, and most players pull more than eighty times to get 5 stars, and they can lose 50/50. 7:05&11:46Another point mentioned here is that 4-star on-field DPS has a lower cap, but they are just as expensive to build. If artifact farming weren't so bad, players might be willing to try more. But these days, most players just want to find a meta character and get rid of the misery of Sisyphus as soon as possible. To put it bluntly, that's why the player community is so disgusted with Imaginarium Theatre
At the end of the day, the meta is interesting and perfectly fine to be discussed. The problem is, was, and always will be the spreadsheet impact players who blindly only follow the meta and militantly enforce it upon other people who recognise that Bennett is a boring af no personality liability clown who actively makes the game feel worse to play by restricting your movement (for example) - that's when the meta suddenly doesn't matter at all. Because now the problem is these people are aggressively telling you how to play the game and actively disssuading you from this foreign concept to them: having fun.
I rarely wish for new characters. In Sumeru, I didn't wish for anyone. In Fontaine, I got The Raiden Shogun C2, Navia and Kazuha. During the recent Shogun banner, I got Engulfing Lightning. I'll never 36 star the abyss because I don't have the characters for it and that's OK. In the recent Headache Theater, I was only able to reach act 2. That thing has so much randomness, it's not funny.
I think meta is important for everybody, not that you must follow it blindly but if you have a favorite character, lets say Xinyan, yeah she is undeniably bad, but if you understand the meta you can use the best supports for her making your favorite characters at least usable, and despite the "genshin is easy" try watching any new player, the game is not easy for them.
I believe that there's a big difference between "i like that character and play it optimally no matter the meta" and "i like that character, i don't understand how they work, nor do i care, i don't give them proper build or team, so why do i struggle?" (indeed, i wonder why). Don't get me wrong, i don't care what characters people use, as long as they don't force their opinion on me (be it waifu or meta), but i do believe everyone should have some knowledge about the game and how to build their favorite characters. And that's where this whole problem rises. I roughly divide meta players and casual playes on two groups: People who just give advice if asked and people who give their advice even if they weren't asked. Both apply to both sides, bc waifu gamers tend to criticize meta players as much the same as last one criticize the first ones. But usually, casual player is the one who starts the conflict. Why? Well, in most cases they whine that they can't clear some content, which automatically triggers knowledgeable playersto share their knowledge. But then it turns out that any advice is pointless, so why such people keep whining is beyond me. At the same time, some people who don't see beyond meta can come to a person and shame them for playing this or that character. Which is also wrong. So at the end of the day: play whoever you want, but do your research on builds and team compositions at least. And stop whining if you don't follow the "rules" of the game. It's not the game's fault. And for meta players - just mind your own business, give advice only if you truly confirm the person needs it. And i hope both sides will have fun that way.
Xilonen is excellent, but in using her over the last I do think that she's... mildly overhyped. While she does buff more than Kazuha at equivalent cons/refinements (whom she is compared to often), you really can feel the loss of Kaz's CC, of his extra off-field elemental application, and the significant amounts of damage he can personally contribute in the right teams. Conversely, her healing unlocks opportunities where Kazuha is a poor fit. Her power level isn't that far off of where it needs to be, considering her element actively does not contribute to most teams. I believe the biggest danger of the meta is the hype it creates can result in people overestimating some characters and disregarding even strong alternative options. Variety is what keeps this game interesting. Because of that, Imaginareum Theater has given Genshin a new lease on life for me. It really keys in to the parts of Genshin's character building and combat I love the most.
100% agreed - Xilonen is really good, but CC is SO important, especially for characters who have close-quarters AoE attacks (e.g. Ayaka's burst just demolishes enemies within its path), so I still feel like Kazu makes more of a difference! Definitely nice to have them both though, since like you say they have different niches!
The craziest thing is that meta is just outright wrong sometimes. You'll hear people say X is X's best team and it's just not. People will recommend artifact sets that are just not the best. People will say a character is bad, no one will pull cons for them, then say they're worse than the character they pulled C2 R1 for. People will suggest you build a character designed to be a sub DPS as a support and then say they have bad damage. It's been feelscrafting from start to finish. And then those opinions end up affecting popularity in a feedback loop. There's so much more variety to meta that meta slaves are not aware of because they didn't sit and do the math and build characters correctly. And then we get less characters with similar designs, they get less screen time, etc.
I started a guide channel for new players, and the meta has me trapped between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I want to tell new players not to pick up characters who are "objectively" bad, but on the other I don't want them to lose sight of having fun if playing the "Most Effective Team Available" isn't something they enjoy. So how to advise, while also not losing people in the shuffle? No amount of disclaimers at the start of a video can ever offset the disappointment if a content creator bills a favorite character as "bad." I may point some of my videos here to help emphasize the (non-)importance of these things.
I mean, I mostly take meta as long as I can make my favorite characters shine. Other than that, I'm fine. For instance, I'll be gladly ignoring Bennet's circle impact or the Xiangling copypasta, since I don't really enjoy their gameplays
My favorite character is Qian and I get so tired when I always see people like team building channels that focus on Meta just dunk on her. Shes cute and fun to play and she’s my most versatile character with good dps while still being an amazing healer but my god is it hard to listen to anyone who isn’t a Qiqi appreciator because of her “50/50 ruiner” title and being “worst character”
I think it's better to view the meta as a way of understanding the game at a deeper level, rather than seeing it as an orthodoxy of the "correct" way to play the game. When you take the time to learn the intricacies of reactions, elemental gauge, internal cooldowns, artifact sets, stats, you're gonna have the knowledge and skill you need to make your favourite characters work well even if they're on the weaker end of the spectrum. The truth of the matter is just slapping together whatever random characters you want might work in the overworld (although you could still struggle even there) but it definitely won't fly in the abyss. "Just play what you want" is poor advice that makes it seem like all characters are equally viable and that your team compositions don't matter, which is just misleading, untrue, and I think gives people inaccurate expectations and sets them up for failure. In my experience the people who are most likely to play "off meta" teams are the meta players. If your favourite character is Chongyun, you might struggle to get decent results if you don't know what you're doing, and the abyss can be hell. Good luck feels-crafting your way to 36 stars with a main DPS Ningguang team. More casual players are more likely to just pull Neuvillette and stick to well established top meta teams and builds because you know that's gonna work without having to get into the weeds about snapshotting and which artifact sets proc off field or things like that. It's not lost on me that a lot of the people who decry "the meta" will at the same time have character showcases with Mualani, Furina, Kazuha, Yelan, Nahida, all with completely bog-standard builds. Which is totally fine, however you wanna play is up to you and no one should look down on you for it. But at the same time, Genshin has such deep, interesting and unique mechanics and I think it's a bit of a shame that is often not appreciated. I think if more players gave it a fair attempt, they would see that the meta is fun. Call me biased cuz I consider myself a meta player, but I don't think it's accurate to say that meta players are primarily the ones going around shaming others for how they play. Sure it happens, but the most common derogatory term you hear used to shame people for how they play is "meta slave" by far.
I would have pulled for Xilonen even tough she was the weakest character to be released. I pulled Shenhe for her hips and no other reason. Anyway, I really appreciate how you treat any subject based on your personal experience unlike the popular opinion. Most discussions are tiresome and repetitive already, you are one of the few that bring something new to the table.
The real reason why meta matters is cost. Any character can clear any content, but the level of investment required is vastly different. Xinyan can 36 star abyss, but would you rather get R5 redhorn + C3 furina to do that, or would you rather clear with C0 neuvillette on prototype amber? Even that wouldn't have mattered if this was a game like breath of the wild where equipment is unlocked through gameplay, but given that this is a gacha game, trying to max out an underwhelming character is almost the equivalent of saying "I spend thousands of dollars on an anime gambling simulator to play it inefficiently." That is not to say you shouldn't play a character who's "off-meta." You should always get, build, and play your favorite character no matter what the "meta" tells you. It's just that if your favorite is unfortunate enough to be bottom tier, you need to have the self discipline to be satisfied with never being able to clear content with them and just stick to the overworld. A lot of players can't come to terms with that, and as a result, they start spending uncontrollably to purchase upgrades to "prove a point" about their character. The "meta" is there as a sanity check to steer players away from this path. There is an argument to be made for saving up long-term (likely 1-2+ years) to get the upgrades required to play "off-meta." However, there's still the issue where you need to be satisfied with not making any meaningful progress for a long time. Additionally, since you've spent all of your capital on one "off-meta" team, your other side needs to be a team that's relatively strong at very low investment, which means you will most likely end up having to follow the "meta" anyway. Let me remind you that regardless of what your income level is, you have more productive ways to spend your money than on a virtual gambling machine where any products you obtain cease to exist the minute a server is shut down. I personally don't think very highly of the "meta" in this game and I like a lot of the weaker characters, but given the predatory nature of the monetization model, it's necessary to recognize the most efficient ways to work around it. And please don't lie to yourself. My quest menu is emptier than zhongli's wallet and the only way you can find an unopened chest in my overworld is by hacking the game. I know how many primogems you can get for free. If you like and play a character, be proud of it. If you saved for years to make a character work, be proud of yourself. Just don't go around yelling "my F2P eula clears in 2 minutes" with missing initial top-up bonuses and R5 battlepass weapons. That's how you spiral into a cycle of denial and addiction.
Honestly, I think it is easier these days to play "off-meta" then it has ever been, with the meta being defined as the most optimal stuff, all around. We have a lot of different characters now, more supports, more off-field DPS types. And so quite a few characters have viable enough teams these days, and a variety of them. And, of course, there's off-meta (less popular characters to use on-field that aren't that bad if you know what you're doing, like Cyno, Ayato, Dehya, and so on...) and there's off-meta (most four star DPS characters). But there's a catch there. If your goal is to do as much as possible, you do need to know various meta things. Neuv is meta in part because he really requires little knowledge of meta. You get him, maybe get Kaz/Furina/Xilonen, and you're pretty much good to waterbeam your way to victory. But if you are playing Xinyan? You'd better know her optimal stuff, and how to use enemy AI against itself, and so on. It takes far more knowledge to do. So the less overall meta your character choice is, the more specific meta you need to compensate.
I don't particularly care about the meta, since i only use characters i like, though i did cave recently and build Bennett, he's just annoyingly necessary for a lot of the characters recently, i wish we'd get an alternative soon so i can bench him again.
This game doesn't NEED the meta talk, sure it's nice to go through on what character can synergize better with the other and that's completely fine, games like Genshin doesn't surely need to be taken serious, Because anyone can be good unless you build them right, generally speaking I think it's meaningless, This game requires you to have fun and that is the main point about this game, the hardcore players have the end game part, It's not going anywhere, bit other than that, enjoy the game how it is and don't feel down but certain characters you don't have just to stick with the meta, cuz it's not worth it.
Well said 👏 To be honest it's saddening to hear people bashing cryo for this reason. I've heard a lot of comments lately justifying hoyo's refusal to rerun certain cryo units because cryo "needs a rework." Like, I'm sure it does, but is that any reason to deny people having fun with units they enjoy playing? I wish people weren't so obsessed with meta that they imply it's a good idea to be without certain characters altogether simply because they aren't meta...
@@MJDanvers It's weird too - the only reason cryo has been underwhelming recently is that they've been leaning towards enemies who cannot be frozen. Against different enemies, it'd be absolutely overpowered! And I still use my Ayaka team in the abyss pretty regularly, even with the endless stream of bosses lmao
@@raptori okay because I was wondering about that. I've been playing for a year but I never heard this many people talking about cryo being "bad" until now, when they bring it up to excuse these rerun decisions. I even had someone essentially call me out as "willfully ignorant" about cryo's problems, but that's not true. I just genuinely never heard about this being a problem until now lol. To hear it's less because of cryo being bad and more because of enemies being resistant to frozen... it seems like hoyo has purposefully steered cryo out of the meta for some reason. I wonder why that is.
But thats just ignorant. People have their own ways to have fun to play this game. And surely some also has fun talking and discussing about meta just as you guys like the game for everything else. If you see a video talking about how weak or strong a character is you could just you know... Don't mind them? Like I don't know why is it so hard just to do that. You can also just acknowledged how strong or weak a character is and still have fun with them yknow.
@@Bravo6 Some people do have fun playing meta, and that's fine and good, no one's taking that away from them. Playing super powerful teams and characters is very satisfying, to be sure. But the issue arises when people are made to feel they're playing the game "wrong" because they're not doing it the meta way. This comes from people putting pressure on other players and ridiculing their approach to the game. No one is bullying meta players afaik, but people who want to do their own thing apart from meta do get bullied over it, unfortunately.
Yeah, I see no reason to draw such hard line in the sand between meta and favorite character. We can use the knowledge of the meta to make your favorite unit more effective, essentially just having proper game knowledge and apply it to any unit.
yep, and don't ever feel pressured to pull the likes of Neuvilette or Arlecchino... i skipped him for Wriothesley and obviously had to have Sigewinne also. i happily skipped Navia and Clorinde.
Yeah, there's a meta for everything. My favorite example of this is pre-Furina Eula. Hyperbloom was a meta option for her. However, if you were discussing hyperbloom, the Eula team was not meta.
I agree, it "doesn't really meta!" Love that pun
I just about to comment about this
The "meta" should just be seen as a guide for what to do when you dont know much or get stuck on a certain challenge, past that point ppl should focus on what brings them as much fun as possible.
yep, i pull for traveling companions, i am NOT going to get "Father" who treats me like i report to her 👎
Without meta there would be no endgame players since the game is boring af outside of it and there is literally 0 content outside of the abyss.. and theater ig but the difficulty is way to trivial. Do you not get that many people enjoy playing meta and clearing content faster than others? Probably a crazy concept innit.
...Girl that is LITERALLY the point
@@boomerremover1514 it's ONLY boring if you just focus on "endgame"
@@boomerremover1514But what do you mean there is no content??? There's the whole wide open world to explore, environment's and music to take in, world quests, character quests, you can build a whole house in a teapot. If what people only want is action and combat, then why play an open world game in the first place??
honestly, i seriously respect people who play off-meta characters out of enjoyment. making a weaker character work because you like them or their playstyle is admirable and shows dedication that the meta-focused players potentially may never match
Me with amber
As a physical Qiqi main i appreciate you
To me, as someone who enjoys theorycrafting meta in Genshin isn’t as much as the most 'optimal solution' but instead trying to figure out a way that every character can be useful to a team. Personally, my favorite character is Keqing and she isn’t the greatest character and yet I still try to use her whenever possible because she’s my favorite. I’m never gonna look down on someone who also use their favorite even though they aren’t the best character in the game. My second favorite character is Kaveh and I have tried to use him in a lot of different teams because that’s something I find fun. Trying to figure out where a character can be useful to a team even though they aren’t the best option.
Thank you for reminding me I needed to finish building plunge Kaveh for a friend.
Phenomenal overview and nuanced discussion on this highly contested topic!
META is supposed to be “the most efficient,” not the only or correct way to play. I highly enjoy learning the technical capabilities of characters or gameplay mechanics and find META discourse exceptionally valuable…to a point, not at the detriment of aiding FOMO for what is becoming for many a gambling addiction or in the very least unwise financial decisions that also tend to turn people away from characters they either once loved or used and now see as pointless once a “more META” character comes out - missing the point of the journey and process along the way. I like the idea of “META is not everything, but it does help!”
Our META obsession is becoming a restraint rather than a blessing and I hope others will come to a balanced position that can leverage information to their advantage without it solely determining the characters they invest in (my two cents: please oh please stop pulling characters you don’t even like!) or ruining their experience
Meta and tc is to combat fomo most casuals and casualbait ccs will overhype every new char released when you actually get into meta circles you relise most chars arnt power creeping anth and will help u cope alot easier with not getting them either because u missed out or thought they were super op
@@GeometryDash-gk2de So true. People seriously overestimate how much difference there is between various characters and teams. The vast majority of the time, you can overcome the difference between a meta and non-meta character with just a bit more artifact farming, or even just playing better (tighter rotations, avoiding attacks, more efficient placement, etc.)
@@GeometryDash-gk2de "overhype every new character", meanwhile I see plenty of ones that have lukewarm reactions to say Clorinde or Sigewinne. Or the fact Emilie was a major skip for everyone except those who picked up a great unit.
The gatekeepers and negative people are the reason why I scream "PLAY WHO BRINGS YOU JOY!" Too many times I've seen people telling others "ohhhh no you shouldn't play this character like that, you should play them like THIS." The newbies don't feel confident enough to talk back and thank them but they like what they're doing. Thank you for a being a calm and welcoming voice when there are a lot of fools out there who forget this is a game meant to bring joy and have fun with 🥰💜
This is the genshin community bro it's the other way around people will tell you ur not having fun if urnplaying any good team
Developers kinda sustains this negative attitude. Cause if abyss not being that hard nobody will buy shiny consts and weapons on their characters. So if you want to close endgame content with low/no money investments there is one way to do so, thats why meta still staying strong and meta players are everywhere
@@MaximKud I think if someone's struggling to complete content, and looking for tips it's nice to help them and show them how they could improve their builds or teams, but what @82ilerya is referring to are people who will jump on a person who for example like Aloy (😎) and tell them "Aloy's trash you suck lmao" :D
I'm not a meta player but I took time to understand people who are. The combat system is robust and nuanced and fun to calculate. 90% of Genshin's audience is casual. No-ones gatekeeping. Meta guides are an easy strieghtforward type of content to make. That's why theres so much of it. When it comes to content creators, I found meta players to be usually very courteous most of the time. More often I hear non-meta players ragging on meta players. Most meta youtubers usually say "play who you like." and "theres no right way to play". Also, learning the game mechanics can help you make your favorite character more functional and more fun in many cases. There's two types of "meta" that helps casuals. One where you make even the weakest teams functional, and the other is using certain characters and knowledge that will make your casual playthrough easier. People are out here enjoying the game how they want.
Who are these invisible people that keep telling other people that they "need" to play X character in the Y team, with the Z rotation? Ive seen way more people complain about these suposed "meta slaves", in order to inject some sort of ideal or agenda into what theyre saying, than I have of actual meta slaves forcing other people to play X, Y or Z characters...
As someone who started this game in 1.1 and absolutely refuses to play Xiangling because of how unfun she is to play (imho) I approve of this video in leaps and bounds. Here's hoping Mavuika will finally have good off-field pyro app and be enjoyable to play
i feel this, i honestly hate xiangling
I don't hate Xiangling but yeah, not my favorite. Despite having nearly 300% ER, I just can't get her burst unless I use Bennett as a battery, and frankly, I'm sick of playing teams with those two. I've started using Dehya for my off-field Pyro application and I just find it so much more fun.
Xiangling is fun with a lot of characters. She is the only character who puts a lot of fire from off-field. I'm not a "meta" player, but I'm tired of the Xiangling slander.
Same mine is C6 and stays at level 1 I'll never build her. At least Sumeru and beyond have made her less valuable
@jessica_glass it's not slander it's the fact the games almost 4 years old and she's still the only character who does what she does. We should've had a 5* option by now that's just my opinion
Omg the amount of times I have been told. “You shouldn’t pull for venti he doesn’t have any value, you should pull kazuha.” I want venti because he was the character that introduced me to genshin impact.
Same lol, my best friend keeps telling me not to get him since I already have kazuha but I still want to get him to complete my archon collection lol
FR people be like "Venti sucks get Kazuha instead" mind your business goofy ahh meta-slave
The thing is that not understanding the Meta, in many cases, end up with people not understanding the combat system, then they actually ask you for advice when they are struggling clearing stuff. Like, I see cases where people play Diluc with atk atk atk artifacts and Lava set, or they place 4 different dps with 0 energy recharge and expect sinergy. Then you advice that they need to use supports or consider team rotations when building teams or to consider proper builds, and then they get mad at you specifically because they can't take advice THAT THEY ASKED. Yes, there are meta players who will offer unrequested advice, but we have the other side of the coin: the players who don't understand the combat system, struggle to clear stuff, get mad at any advice you provide because it may involve using a character they don't like for comfort (like Keqing with Fischl) and then get mad with all the players who understand the combat system a bit
If you watch the whole video you'll realise I'm not even remotely against understanding meta; there are tons of positives that it brings to the community and the individual player, and it only becomes a problem when it becomes an obsession :)
If someone asks for advice and the refuses to take that advice, that's an individual problem at the other end of the spectrum (and I too have run into people like that, I get it's it's frustrating as hell) - best not to waste your energy on them, just let them fail on their own!
Perfect video. One thing I notice is how most of the FOMO is created by the community itself instead of the game, which is quite sad.
This is probably gonna get me killed but i think meta is important to the game and heres why:
People spend SO MUCH MONEY on these characters, every five star character that comes out should be at the very least decent, i remember when dehya came out people were extremely pissed and rightfully so, a badass character that was extremely hyped up to end up being that bad is actually ridiculous (she has more uses now in lyney teams and such which is nice but shes still not good, this is from someones whos 36*ed with her multiple times)
And then people were saying “doesn’t matter bro waifu over meta” as an excuse for hoyoverse to sell us a terrible character was just stupid, because if they can get away with making a character that was barely even viable, who says they wont do it again
And a lot of the time “meta players” are actually pretty chill and just want to help people, like say your favorite character is candace, and you wanna player her as a main dps, they can tell you that she has a better spot in teams as a sub dps and support (with like mualani arle and such), or recommend you xianyun for plunge, or some people may see your build, say its bad, then try to help you. That is NOT a personal attack but some people think that it is. My thought process is that if you have a character you love, why not try to make them as strong as possible?
Not to mention that some of the most popular videos on youtube for GI is guide content, meaning clearly the meta is important if theyre looking up meta builds
Then some people also say “meta takes the fun out of the game” when personally i think doing big damage is beating stuff fast is very fun. Playing for fun is nice to some, but Meta is also fun for others
Dehya was decent, even as an on-fielder, just most people wanted her to be something she wasn't, so made sub-optimal choices and/or were disappointed. And her team options have improved quite a bit since then, so it is even easier now than it was at her release, even allowing for tougher Abysses (she actually trivializes a lot of the "harder" things, like the dancing duo or consecrated beasts). That's coming from someone who has 36 starred with her every Abyss since her release. Though her kit does have issues, and is definitely weaker at C0 than it is at C4 and beyond.
As far as helping people, phrasing matters. If someone wants to play a character, say, Dehya, as the on-fielder, you shouldn't say, "No, use her as a Lyney support. She sucks on-field." That doesn't help anyone. But if you explain that her multipliers are low, and that impacts this and that, and her dependency on constellations, and so on mean it won't be that effective, but here are things people do, this what you'll need for each option, with this and that up and downside, and this is what they can expect from it, then you're giving them knowledge, and letting them do with it what they will. Let people make informed choices, fully knowing the consequences thereof. Because most people's thought process is, "This is a game. I want to have as much fun as possible." And fun, unlike biggest numbers, is subjective. Don't tell them what is and isn't fun. Ask them what they think would be fun, then give them the info to help them realize that fun as much as possible.
But as far as meta goes, I think there are toxic meta players ("If it isn't best, it is bad"). And there are players that don't care about meta at all. They just run around with whatever they feel like. And most players fall in the middle. An exploration character might want Furina so they can walk on water, Zhongli to ignore mobs and mine rocks, one of the anemos for vertical movement, and a speedy horizontal character like Yelan or Xilonen. That mix is a meta. And when it comes to content, same thing applies. I could play more meta teams than I do, but I'm a Dehya main, and I'm going to on-field Dehya on one side or the other, with the team I find the most overall effective for what I want to accomplish (crush abyss, no males, no circle impact).
“PEOPLE SPEND SO MUCH MONEY ON THESE CHARACHTERS” only whales who dont know the value of money spend alot on it.
The gacha is predatory AF.
"People spend SO MUCH MONEY" That's literally *their* choice, no one's making them. Gacha in itself is predatory enough, we shouldn't be encouraging the game to become p2w. I agree they did Dehya (and a few others) dirty and people are right to complain but again, for the longest time, Genshin has allowed us to care about who we like more than who's simply the strongest and it should stay that way. Powercreep sucks.
"My thought process is that if you have a character you love, why not try to make them as strong as possible?" The meta view of "strong as possible" is minmaxing (which on its own is a pain, let alone when you throw RNG into the mix) and using the character for what it was designed for and sometimes people enjoy the character more when played differently. I for example built Mika as a physical DPS to buff himself, I also built EM Raiden BEFORE the introduction of Sumeru and dendro because I love her skill. 🤷
"Some of the most popular content in GI is guide content" But not all of it is meta. I actually stay away from meta focused guides, there are content creators who focus more on the casual/f2p side (*ahem**gestures to this very channel*) that give more realistic stat goals to aim for and let you know of many options outside of the bis.
Finally, what can take the fun out of the game is the attitude of meta slaves, not meta itself. I agree killing everything super fast is fun, but I don't care how people build their characters and I don't shame them for it. 😂
You lost me at (People spend SO MUCH MONEY). Man you stupid. Its their own choice and its mostly whales
Would honestly send this video to anyone who's new or unfamiliar with meta in genshin, it's so well done. I think it covers all sides of the issue in a very intelligent and comprehensive way. Thanks for another great video 👏
So I have a friend who's a day 1 player who doesn't care about meta (she didn't even know what it was until i told her, despite her having played genshin for years longer than I have) but she simply dreads floor 12 of the abyss. She said she often skips it altogether. And it's not that she's casual or doesn't know how to build characters, in fact, she's the most knowledgeable person I know about character kits and team comps, ironically. But she's a low spender and plays genshin to have fun, not for meta. I think it was very telling that even someone with the capability of building characters extremely well and who's had years to invest in characters dreaded floor 12 and found it a nightmare to play. As for me, I've been playing for about a year, I'm AR57 and a low spender, and I can't even get stars on floor 11. So my main problem with the meta focus is probably feeling like a failure since I can't 36* abyss, and I've had people assure me that this is my skill issue. And, well, maybe it is, but after hearing that 36*ing abyss is essentially easy, it's perplexing that my skill issue has made it feel basically impossible. I can't help wondering if the HP inflation in abyss has had a worse effect than anyone realizes, slowly increasing the DPS/stat check without actually increasing the difficulty.
Which actually means rather than a skill issue, it's an investment issue, which is rather disheartening for someone who's favorite character is Wriothesley. As I said in another comment, there's been an outpouring of people defending hoyo's decision not to rerun him because cryo is no longer meta. I think it's sad that meta has become so all-consuming in the community that people would advocate for people to be *unable* to pull characters they dearly love and have a blast playing, just because they're not the most meta option out there anymore. It's disheartening as someone who feels very behind in the game and makes me wonder if I have no place in the community. I want to be able to have fun playing above all else, and it's sad to feel at times as if that's not a valid way to play the game.
It's 100% an investment issue, even with the best units and game knowledge our resources to level up are heavily time-gated. Most units these day are reaction based and/or HP based, taking them to lvl90 talent 8~10 is expensive and intentionally time consuming, making two teams to fill that criteria can be difficult. PLUS each abyss reset might lean into a different team archetype which means needing ONLY two teams is bullshit lol
@@snailwhale6673 Precisely!! For example my sister who also plays genshin pulled Neuvillette partly because she liked him, but also partly because of the people who said, "He's effortlessly broken, you just slap HP artifacts and prototype amber on him and you can solo 36* abyss." They completely left out one very crucial detail: Investment. It took her months of time and effort to improve his build and put together a team that actually made him feel broken. It was time consuming and expensive just as you said, and wait for an abyss with a hydro resistant boss and it's time to grind again with a whole different team.
I think ur friends builds and meta knowledge just suck and they're the most knowledgeable person you know coz u surround urself with casuals like you can make bad chars clear fast there r 3 other slots on the team and only 2 of them have to be good chars with any amt of synergy
@@GeometryDash-gk2de Okay, can you explain a character's whole kit in detail to me as well as their synergies with other characters and team comps off the top of your head? My friend can. She is absolutely knowledgeable, and her builds don't suck. Abyss is a stat check, not a skill check. But if you have a showcase of yourself getting all stars on floor 12 with a team that has no synergy, feel free to send me the link :)
@@MJDanvers 100% - abyss is such a stat check. There's a bit of skill involved - e.g. a few times I've shaved off like 30s by fixing my rotations - but if your characters don't have strong enough builds then there's only so much you can do, and the artifact grind is just neverending...
Building characters is needed even for overworld, so character guides are needed. The thing I find weird is that a lot of guides, willingly or not, create hype around characters doing a lot of damage or not, which is meaningless for the players who don't do abyss (the vast majority)
I don't think it is meaningless, though. I spend most of my resin in coop, because I like the variety it creates. But one thing you quickly realize there is that so many people have very underpowered characters. We're talking situations where stuff takes forever to die with a Kinich and Arl on the team. Where I'm typically better off not playing my Xilonen, because my playing a DPS will clear things considerably faster than a C2+ Xilonen with her weapon buffing a Neuv and Arl. So the relative aspect of A vs B still matters, when those players are off fighting something by themselves in their world.
These players don't find everything easy. A good chunk of them probably do coop because they find it hard to do the domains solo. They can find certain of the ascension mat bosses hard. And this isn't a dig at them, because they're likely newer players, without the years of accumulated characters, weapons, and artifacts, as well as knowledge of tactics and combos that comes with playing for that long.
@@Axterix13 you might have a point, playing for a lot of time I can do domain with whatever team, but some can be hard for some players. I still don't know if that warrantees creating hype over what character is the best one and what character isn't tho. Plus there's the fact that this discourse is never really intentionally aimed at domain completion, but more so at abyss; people would recommend Venti more if they tackled domains and such
This is probably the best video on "the meta" that I have seen, and it isn't even close, but there is some things that that could have been handled better.
Starting the video with the explanation of metagaming is really good, since that is where the term originally comes from. The term “meta” also later got the meaning of META = Most Effective Tactic(s) Available, and that definition is probably more used. Not differentiating between the two is a shame, since, in my opinion, the biggest problem with most “meta” discussions is that people can’t or won’t separate the two different meanings. I think that it is a huge mistake, because the META(tactics) change based on the metagame that you play. And when two people with different metagames discuss the META(tactics) it leads to all the problems that everyone has with talk about “the meta”.
In Genshin this problem arises even when people talk just about the “abyss meta” since that still includes multiple different metagames with their own META(tactics). For example someone’s “abyss meta” means the META(tactics) in the metagame of clearing the abyss as easily as possible. For that person Zhongli and Kokomi might be the META(tactics). Some other persons “abyss meta” might be the META(tactics) for speedruning with 5 total 5* pulls(weapons + characters + cons), c6 4* characters and r5 4* weapons, only including the ones that you could get without paying. For this second person c1r1 Neuvillette, c0 Nahda, c0 Kazuha, and c6 Xiangling might be the META(tactics).
So next time you(anyone who reads this) hear someone talk about “the meta”(maby in the other comments ;)), think if they are talking about the META(tactics) or the metagame. And if they are talking about the META(tactics), think for what metagame is that the META(tactics).
Whenever a new character comes out with crazy scaling it really just makes me less excited for them - I'm MUCH more excited when characters bring something new to the game which doesn't negate all the other characters I've already built, so when someone is literally just X but with bigger numbers it feels really underwhelming...
agreed!
That's precisely why I dislike Chiori's kit. Yeah, sure, it has some unique parts here and there, but overall the character is just Albedo but better, because Albedo definitely wasn't already in a bad position when she arrived 🙄
@@Otherface You can consider Neuvillette in the same way. He is litteraly Ayato pro max and no I don't consider Ayato off field application like something unique enough.
It is probably the first time, they just create a characters who is litteraly the same characters but more damage than a previous limited 5 stars.
@@Otherfacei like Chiori. i joined long after the Dragonspine Event and finding out Albedo's BiS was event locked i never bothered to know much about him. i STILL don't care much for him and certainly not now that Chiori exists.
otoh, Xilonen is the newer one that i don't care for, i ended up getting her sig which Chiori CAN use, i will soon have 80 pulls and i will NOT try to get Xilonen which i will agree would be probably be "better for my account", but use it to get Uraku Misugiri. THAT will bring me more enjoyment than getting Xilonen - because meta doesn't...😊
@@Camelia437Neuvillette and Ayato play totally differently, and Ayato isn't so weak you can't play him if his gameplay is what you prefer. They're "literally" the same only by reducing them to numbers and meta and ignoring everything else, which an issue with the Genshin community moreso than Hoyo
I blame the fact that the biggest content creators (Tectone and Mtashed, for exemple) came from competitive pvp games, so they played Genshin (which is, again, a single player game) with this mindset of “winning” the game. Even terms like “hypercarry” were imported from League of Legends.
hypercarry
@@nevergonnagiveyouupnevergo2795 Thank you
Vars as well. He grew as someone talking about League of Legends in terms of balance and overall design choices (among other things) and eventually added Gesnhin, the Star Rail and I think even ZZZ to his list and obviously, carries over how he talks about the game like he does about League
I’m also someone who doesn’t care about pulling a character because they’re meta. I pull for personality, gameplay, and sometimes design. But when I’m waiting for a character I don’t care if they’re good, I just care if they’re fun, like you said. I absolutely hate Xianglings gameplay and am waiting for Mavuika because I hope she’ll be a pyro sub dps thats actually fun to play. I pulled for Furina because I loved her from the beginning, but I don’t really like her gameplay that much, but I don’t regret pulling her at all, plus I do use her still bc I like her. About Cyno, I love his gameplay and will Stan him even tho he’s not “meta”.
I never cared about META in any game i ever played. May it be the console games, MMO or Gacha. I do whatever the hell I want and still am able to beat everything at a certain point. It's called having fun and loving to discover. Hell I don't even like most of the female character designs in Genshin. It's those people who always try to force opinions on you and get mad over fiction who are the problem
12:12 - 12:40 perfect summation of it all. Like people don’t even remember that Emilie exists 😭 all cause most of the community chose to skip her. like i get it you want to be smart with your primos but the difference in excitement is crazy. Especially given how good some of these more “forgotten” units can be. (Chiori, Sige, Emilie)
My friend pulled Chiori, said she was the worst geo unit... And she didn't even build her properly, just a random weapon that she thought fits, goofy ahh random artifacts AND level 60
Even non-competitive players have some interest in knowing what characters are most powerful (and potentially overpowered) out of the box, given the high cost of obtaining and building characters in both time and money. When you have limited resources, especially money, it can feel like a huge setback to spend ages and $$$ getting and building a character only to find out that they underperform and add little to your ability to build teams that can be played enjoyably.
Also, the fact is that It does take significant baseline power to clear the abyss, and you may have even higher needs for baseline power of your teams if like many of us you're somewhat lacking in mechanical skill. The amount of gems you gain from full clearing it is significant over time, and not being able to do that because of being limited to underpowered or poorly built teams only makes it that much slower to get more powerful units that feel more fun to play. And as we have seen over time, the demand for baseline power level to get easy clears has increased noticeably over the years, and shows no sign of slowing down. So even units that seem "overpowered" today may feel merely adequate before long.
That's not to say you can't make teams work or can't clear content when playing only units that you like, without regard to meta standing. But if you're struggling at all to accomplish something you want to do, or trying to figure out how best to spend limited time and resources to gain more power, then reliable commentary about relative standing of units in terms of power potential for investment is extremely valuable.
Thank you! I think I really needed to hear this!
As someone who played briefly during 1.1 and came back during the later patches of Sumeru, I felt very overwhelmed by the constant talks of meta and felt pressured to play certain characters. While at the begining it was helpful to learn about teambuilding, later I felt like I was constantly seeking validation for my choices when ultimately, I just need to have FUN.
Now that I have 1 team I feel confident about I want to play fun characters or characters whose design I really love, instead of forcing myselft to play with OP characters I don't even like.
Two days ago I was talking about getting Hu Tao’s c1 or sig and someone told me that ***Hu Tao*** was bad because Arlecchino exists. The meta slaves are unhinged.
Proud triple crowned Xinyan and Qiqi user, and day one Kokomi user (triple crowned too of course)!
I'm an avid Sigewinne player and my bare existence is enough for meta slaves to insult me in every way possible. I don't get why they do that. Why hate on characters who become more usefull/powerful as more characters release. I use game8 and similar sites to help me figure out how to build characters but when it comes to teams it really doesn't matter. I play Navia+Xilonen with Candace and Qiqi currently and I'm loving it. I have fun with the game by being free to chose what I want to combine :/ and it got me through spiral abyss and imaginarium theatre without problems. I can clear them with random teams and it's not a problem.
I learned META because I wanted to beat Abyss without META character like Bennett and Kazuha....
In my experience, general Meta, i.e. theories how to make the most damage across all characters in the game, is a kind of hobby, similar to speedrunning. People involved do that because of their interest in understanding the mechanics, not because they need it for something. Whether or not it is important to general player population then depends on the game - the harder the game, the more important it is.
Besides this general Meta, there's also Personal Meta that applies mostly to new players who did not have enough time and resources to collect a lot of characters and these are interested in how to use the characters they have the best. Genshin is not all that easy game before AR55, using resources wrong may slow down your progress significantly in that phase. And surprisingly, general Meta is what comes to help in this phase as in case of Genshin it is not a set of simple strict rules "use these particular characters and these particular builds" but rather as a wealth of actual understanding of the mechanics and learning it allows people to improvise and replace characters in Meta teams with other ones that may not be as good but still can fulfill that role.
Only when you're a veteran player with plenty of characters, you can completely toss Meta away and do whatever you please but the fact remains that the knowledge of game mechanics is still with you and you do use it and the ability to improvise you learned earlier to build your new teams, however non-meta you consider them to be.
As a veteran who's mained meta and non-meta, follows guides of builds, and tries playing ~60% of characters I pull at least for friendship, I'm someone in the middle of this mess. Meta is such a double-edged sword, it brings people to either embrace it or reject it too hard. It helps us have more fun and be efficient with our blorbos, but it encourages toxic attitudes in both sides.
I really, really enjoy the gameplay of the two most powerful DPS currently (Neuvi and Arle), but there's been occasions where I didn't like and didn't pull for the top meta (Ganyu back in the day, for instance). If the next big one isn't of my liking, I'll skip. I remember being completely burned out of using Raiden in the rational hype era as I hated that team and I find her burst dull, but I needed the primos, and that left me with this deep life lesson.
Lately, I pull for different DPS (5* and 4*, good and mid) to spice things up outside of the abyss, as long as I like the playstyle, but my main approach to "meta" investment in the game today can be summed as this:
1. Support Impact is the way. Get the meta-defining buffers before. Get the healers. Get the CCs. Get the off-field sub-DPS. Because those will be the building blocks for your faves' teams. If you really love the support or they're in all your teams, vertically invest in those and not the DPS you might abandon tomorrow! One of my best decisions was C2 Furina, and now every abyss all my teams but Arle's are fighting for her. Even in my f2p account I C1'd her in a rerun. My Kazuha is C2R1 too. I'd get more Xilonens too but not now, maybe in a rerun
2. Only do weapon banner if you can find use in both of the weapons. My Wanderer is perfectly fine with the communal R5 widsith, didn't risk for a donut not even Kokomi and Baizhu want. Don't feel pressured to get the perfect BiS with crit dmg 88%, most times you're fine with a second or f2p option. Also, only C1-C2R1 your main if you can afford it and aren't waiting for other characters, don't sweat over that. Fuck FOMO
3. Overinvest in your best non-top tier mains vertical and/or horizontally so they can get the most powerful they can be. I stubbornly stayed as a Xiao and Cyno main during their lowest, because I adore them and I still enjoy their gameplay after all these years. I minmaxed their builds until I was happy. I got them their BiS 5* polearms. I got all their best supports for their best teams, and found ways to work around their flaws. I try to do the abyss with either of them or both first as a challenge if the lineup was good for them. And mind you... with time, they've gotten much better with buffs and teammate choices that solve their problems! Cyno in quickbloom might not be Alhaitham tier but his team clears, and in one abyss cycle he was much better than my Neuvi team if you can believe it. Xiao's current triple anemo team is simply AMAZING and my favorite next to Arlecchino mono pyro. Both guys feel different to their old clunky selves now. The teams are expensive, but I'm willing to spend even money (150€ for Faruzan cons...)
4. Build someone with a non-meta build and run around with it without caring if it's "wrong", it's good for the soul. I have a C2 crit DPS Venti on 2p VV 2p atk%. Again, I have a 900 EM C2R1 Kazuha for a VV-slave swirl boy so MIGHT AS WELL make him stronger in other ways. I love it. He's so chaotic. I "had a dream" about Chasca's bow and I think I'll be getting it for him just to be a menace
Great video 👍 So far, I have enjoyed most all meta characters’ gameplay, so I enjoy pulling for the strongest characters. There are also a handful of “mid” to “weak” characters I really enjoy such as Heizou, Ganyu, Ayaka, Diluc, and Tighnari that I try to use just for pure enjoyment. I have my c6 Heizou with c6 faruzan, and I am so close to completing Melt Ganyu, the first team I ever wanted to build but I’ve lost my 50/50 for zhongli on 2 separate banners, once I get him my account will feel complete and from then on if they’re meta I’ll pull, and if I enjoy them I’ll pull. Maybe I’ll even pull on a weapon banner one day 😱 but I wholeheartedly agree with the disheartening fact that some meta players are mean and look down on players who want to play unoptimially just for fun. We should always be supportive no matter what, it’s just a game 🤷♂️
Pretty much agree, and I always put it like this: meta shouldn't tell you who to play, it tells you how to make the characters you *want* to play better.
It's more accurate to say theory crafting(TC) is the beneficial part of "meta".
Whereas the meta itself is the application of TC principles to shorthand decide which characters are good.
Everyone benefits from TC, but not everyone should follow meta.
And it's unfortunately the gatekeeping type people that are loudest in trying to dictate how other people should play.
Lovely video as always! I learned more about the meta than I already knew. I'm in the same camp as you where I don't really pay attention to the meta... but I do experience FOMO when characters (i.e. Furina) are used in SO many teams and seems to be instrumental to making certain teams viable.
i have played beidou since i start play the game and haven stop 4 years later
I have the 'issue' that the characters I wanted to pull for either became meta ( Neuvillette ) or already were meta ( Alhaitham ). But I pulled them bc of character and design. And felt the need to make them and their teams the best they could be.
And I'm sure both will exit the meta at some point and I can finally play them without people accusing me me of being meta obsessed
🤦♂️
I pick my characters by design and how much I liked them during the story. I have a decent number of meta characters but try and run them in non meta ways. Like my quickbloom team is very much still a version 3 design and it'll stay that way cause I love every character involved
Great video. I just finished the new Abyss with the newly increased HP and started wondering about one of the things you touched upon in the video. As the hp keeps increasing, it will become increasingly difficult to downright impossible to clear Abyss with fun off-meta teams. I only just started being able to 36 star and while that's great, I was looking forward to building most of my characters and playing them in the abyss, too. For example, Yanfei is one of my favourite characters, but there is pretty much no point in even bringing her to floor 12 because she just...can't compete. Another team I really want to build is freeze bloom with Barbara. And I have seen people clear abyss with both Yanfei and Barbara but as the hp increases, I'm not sure if even they will be able to do it anymore.
But yeah. Abyss is the way it is. With new super strong characters coming out, they will keep increasing the hp. I just wish we had something....different. I like Imaginarium Theater, but I feel like the kind of fun content I would want is still lacking. I want some kind of dungeon where you have to run, climb, solve puzzles, kill enemies, etc. Like a timed exploration thing. Idk. Something.
100% feel the same - Yanfei carried me in the abyss for a long time, and mine is still strong enough to clear at the moment, but it does feel like it's slowly slipping away. The way they could "fix" that while still increasing HP is to release more overpowered *support* characters, but that kinda sucks too...
And yeah 100% feel the same wanting something different. What I really want is WuWa's Illusive Realm... it's just so fun. You pick a character to start with, and then you explore a series of domains (like Imaginarium Theater, except that each section is a little chunk of explorable world with a couple of items hidden and some enemies to fight). The important part: your character starts off fairly weak, but as you progress through the domains you collect powerups which add new abilities to your character and multiply their strength to insane levels. The enemies get stronger too, so by the end of it, imagine that you'd be doing 400k per charged attack with Yanfei, fighting against some souped-up boss who is balanced for that level of power. Would mean that you could use *any* character to clear it, they'd just get their own crazy powerups, and it's just so much fun!
So much of what you brought up in the negatives were the same issues I had experienced when taking a break from Genshin and jumping into Nier Reincarnation when it came out (RIP, left us too soon); that "the Meta" was the end all be all for people and that ended up creating a bland experience of everyone just trying to beat content with the same exact methods. It wasn't until the last year of the game that high end content started getting REALLY weird with fight and combat gimmicks that you couldn't just steamroll with your most powerful units and weapons. We were being given content that required a lot of problem solving and creative thinking, and as a result players started coming up with the most bonkers and sometimes funny ass hell team compositions for clearing content.
Developing that mindset and a deeper understanding of my "toolbox" works perfectly well in Genshin Impact and often thrives in it. It's that mindset which led me to realize I could consistently have Neuvillette's charge attack by giving Sigewinne the Sacrificial Bow to make 4 additional water droplets for Neuvillette to use. It also helps me build teams that normally depend on Bennett and make it work without Bennett. Very useful because there's only one Bennett and you can't just use him for both Spiral Abyss teams. Also with the introduction of Imaginarium Theater, that's made team comp problem solving skills all the more valuable with how you can't rely on creating perfect teams and instead have to work with whatever they give you and sometimes think really weird and outside the box.
At the end of the day, I'm having more fun going "Wow this unhinged chaos team worked great" instead of "Alright I cleared this content faster than anyone else with the same 3 units".
From what I've heard of some guidemakers and theorycrafters, the primary reason they want to explain a character's combat strength to the playerbase is so that everyone can make informed purchases of characters, constellations and weapons, since as we all know, those can get VERY expensive. That certainly is a noble reason. Additionally there's traces of meta talk left from people who have played other gacha games with leaderboards and rampant powercreep that left only the most recent characters playable, before they played genshin, that brought along the focus on meta as baggage from those previous games
That's why I subscribed to Your channel. I've felt really bad, some time ago, that I never passed the Abbys and my characters are much more weaker then what my friends had on their accounts... but they were shocked that I have 100% exploration on every region and finished most quests. I don't really play this game for fighting, which may be weird to some, I enjoy going around, talking to npcs and making cute space in teapot for my favorite characters. That's also why I like how You talk about characters personality and story in Your tutorials. I've build Xiangling, coz everyone keeps praising how meta she is, and builds some good teams, but it's still much more fun to me to throw together 4 characters that, I think, would like each other.
I think it should be noted that the Abyss total HP chart can be slightly misleading, as there are multiple other factors that influence Abyss difficulty. For example, a higher total HP that is shared amongst a lot of different enemies will be easier to deplete with AoE attacks, compared to a lower total on a single boss. Also, while total HP may be lower, other gimmicks, like invulnerability phases or elemental shields, can often increase the total time to kill more than if they had greater total HP. There's also the blessings to consider, such as in the most recent Abyss, which may have had higher total HP, but also had an extremely strong blessing that made it overall fairly easy compared to past lineups with lower total HP.
For the most part, I'd say that Abyss is probably not being balanced against what we players consider meta teams. HoYo datamines everything players do, so they are likely trying to balance Abyss against the "average" player that attempts it (as it would appear most players do not). As the game matures, the roster develops, and more powerful team archetypes emerge, the Abyss must increase in difficulty to stay relevant, but no individual character or team is going to move the needle significantly. After all, players have been speedrunning Abyss floors in under 15 seconds for years, the performance ceiling has never been a factor in balance, before.
good take. on top of that, some "meta" characters are shoddily designed (e.g. the missing physics integration of the hydro pump) but people hype them up anyway because of the numbers, giving the wrong feedback to the developer
The only reason I clicked on this video was because of the pun please continue these puns I live for them
Did you see the pun on the Layla video thumbnail? 😂
Ty I also live for puns 😂
Two of the most wholesome subreddits are Yoimiya and Eula mains, both of which these characters are considered "trash" or niche in their class. But hey, I'd take a wholesome "wow that's a great build. welcome!" community over people who constantly over their throats of who's the better pyro polearm dps. (I'm looking at you Hu Tao and Arlecchino mains)
This is an incredibly well-scripted and informative video for both metaheads and non-metaheads. Really well done.
Meta matters for those of us who care about the meta. There are plenty of meta sheep who make fun of casual players for using suboptimal setups, but there are also an equal amount of toxic casuals who make fun of people for chasing meta characters and optimal builds when they "dont need to", with the common sentiment of "you can clear with anyone". Casuals just want to play their favorites, and Tryhards dont want to settle for "just clearing". Let people play in the way they enjoy.
I am fairly new to Genshin. Started in 4.7. When I first started watching all these guide videos, I felt quite pressured to have certain characters...But I now decided to pull whoever I enjoy playing. Everyone has been hating on Chiori, but I pulled for her instead of Xilonen, since I prefer Chioris play style, character, and design☺️💛🧡
I only acknowledge the meta when I want a character that is gonna last and be enjoyable or work with low investment. Other than that it doesn’t matter at all but many units in this game are simply more fun than others. One of the reason I tried pulled for xilolonen is because I’m almost always gonna have a reason to use her. As long as a character has a reactive element like pyro or hydro she can be used on it. So Im always gonna have a reason to play her and even if she isn’t the best option she’s an option that works.
She is for me fun, and she will always have a use. Also not needing extreme investment to be usable is a very valuable because you only have to get lucky once not 2-3 does make characters better to pull on. But to make a long story short, I would personally try to pull characters that are fun and that won’t be useless in a patch or 2 and ones that make you want to play more. Either Personally or because it allows you to be creative with teams or fun exploring, fun factor should always be the most important thing to consider.
Therefore I will play my Noelle Candace combo.
To be fair, many players will pay attention to the meta. At the very least they will pay attention to what character/weapon are considered to be good. We like doing big dmg numbers after all.
Despite that, i still encourage ppl to just build what you have and like. For example, i like Chiori and many people doomposting her at release because she only do dmg and offers nothing beside that. So i just build her like what she supposed to do, doing dmg and put her in a team that at the very least doesn't get ruined by her geo attack. Like Arlle double geo.
I'd say follow the meta at the start and get a few key supports. After that, you eventually hit a point where you can do whatever you want. I use a shenhe wriothesley plunge team sometimes. Thats definitely not meta, but it does enough most the time.
Yeah, the meta is why I took extended breaks three times so far. From 1.2 to 1.5, 2.3 to 2.7, and 3.3 to 3.7. All because I didn't have the meta characters and they drove me out of building my Bennett and Xiangling, who would later become the best characters to date. Because of the meta fanatics I got burnt out and made me build non-meta characters out of spite.
I remember back in the day when I was kicked out of co-op for using literally anyone but Diluc, Keqing, Klee, Xiao, and Hu Tao, especially if I want to use healers or supports, back in the 1.0 versions because they're the meta DPSes. Even back in Sumeru patches I got kicked out for not having any of the meta Dendro characters, hence why I hate co-op and combat events ever since. It's also why I mained Diluc and Beidou from 3.0 onwards up until I got Arlechinno.
Those meta freaks should go and touch some grass, ffs.
tbh ive been playing this game game almost since launch and i started looking at meta since like half of fontaine patch? and i still dont care enough to pull for someone i dont like, first and primarily there are characters i want to look at, get their lore, listen to their voicelines and have fun with in every aspect of the game, big numbers are fun but if i want to build some 4* just for shit and giggles then i will do just that
also thank you for saying nice things abt imaginarium, i’m glad someone else see the fun horizontal building can bring to your account
I think the emphasis on meta is partly in due to players not wanting to waste resources and primos building characters that are suboptimal. Also from my time with Genshin, I find people who do make content around the meta do so to help players build efficient teams to make the most of the units instead of having to sink hours and primos for something that doesn’t give them the same results as what’s recommended. It’s just the sense of “am I playing / building this character correctly”. There’s no one saying you can’t do whatever you want with your account but there are a plethora of people who might not understand how a character should be built or teams they shine in especially if they’re having difficulty clearing content.
Personally, I follow the meta so my favorite characters can be at their best, which I think is what everyone wants at the end of the day regardless if the characters are viewed favorably or not.
7:30 this is not a negative girl. That's just a natural way of progressing the game
Not for everyone of course! but some people do miss the challenge. Obviously anyone wo decided to c6r5 laid their own bed, but there are those of us who generlaly stick to c0, yet the difficulty difference between end game and the res tof the content is so steep *an optional* ( *you* don't have to enable it) difficulty setting would be very welcome from time to time!
@@saurusness Ofc it would, I agree. I'm just saying that upgrading characters isn't a negative, that's kind of the point 😭
@@saurusness The whale aspect didn't even really matter. Like my Ning, a day 1 four star, in WL8, would obliterate almost every camp in the open world solo in seconds. No other other characters needed. And that's mostly due to how long I've been playing the game, between more primos earned/spent, more artifacts farmed, and so on. Sure, she's using Yae's signature, but that's just an R1 weapon in the hands of someone with Yae. And if I farm up the new geo set for her, she'll be doing that at WL9 as well.
Now, WL9 definitely helped in this regard. But it really isn't enough. I'd like the option to raise my WL up to, well, 11, probably. No cool down on changing it, though. Just don't have it impact the rewards, and let me change it at will. Just in case I have visitors to my world and I want to lower it for their sake, but then I want to be able to up it again the moment they are gone. Also, don't lock out people due to my increased difficulty. If they want to visit, let them.
8:30 My account has been around since 1.2. I stopped playing around 3.5 (after Shenhe’s rerun), as by luck was so abysmal that it left me with one singular Ayaka team, that I couldn’t build due to artifact luck, and was tied to a dying element (Cryo). Mualani was the character that both pulled me back to the game (with her design) and kept me playing the game (with her gameplay, which I find fun). Also, Hoyo threw me a bone with Xilonen and gave me her on a 50/50 at 17 pity, which definitely helped. That said, I still only have two functional teams, one of which is still the Ayaka team which, while I have managed to improve significantly since I came back, is still too weak to allow me to 36-star the abyss (highest I’ve gotten so far is 32).
I am generally the type of person to play the characters I like, but build their teams towards the meta. For instance, a semi-theoretical overload team I’ve had in the works since 2.5 (when I got Yae Miko) has been missing Yoimiya in particular for a very, very long time. Even though Yoimiya has been powercrept, I’m still going to save my primos for her eventual rerun. The only thing of substance that’s changed since the team’s inception was that the pyro support got switched to Chevreuse, for fairly obvious reasons. Yoimiya’s seat in the team has been reserved since 2.5, even down to the name I gave it, “Firework Show”.
To emphasize my horrible luck, I feel like mentioning that I still don’t have Razor.
I think that the openworld is not as hard as the abyss because it's designed to be manageable with starting characters (that's why they often give us clips has 4 stars and the starting characters when they show a new map like Sumeru teasers)
but I really likes how they added the local legends to open world with some of them being even harder than the abyss which gives you a reason to maximize your characters
I have waited so long for a video like this. I thought I couldn’t be the only one who feels like this. I love watching TC content, because I think it is interesting. But sometimes it feels way too stiff.
I personally will never understand the Kaveh hate (in regards to his kit). I understand his flaws and realize that my favorite teams are largely being carried by other characters, but my best Nilou team uses him as the driver and it's so fun to play. I wouldn't even kind of put him at the bottom of the 4-stars list.
I'll make a Kaveh video eventually to fully explain why I dislike his kit, but to summarise; it's one of those kits that work against itself, while not adding any major benefit to any team you put him in, similar to a couple of other characters.
I love him dearly as a character, and so I worked hard to find way to make use of him (and of course in OW you can absolutely use him), but he is one of the few characters whose kit I do think deserves its reputation 😔
@@saurusness Can't wait to see it. 😊 And please know I meant no disrespect. Your opinion on Kaveh is definitely the popular consensus, but I've just never felt it personally, whereas units like Candace? Yeah, totally agree with the hate.
@@crimsonseiko Didn't come across disrespectful at all 💜I just didn't want anyone to think I'm a "hater" - tt makes me happy there are Kaveh appreciators who also genuinely enjoy playing with him! 😊
I love kaveh and for people who also love him I advise playing him in this team: (Kaveh-Furina-Xianyun- C6 Bennet) yeah it's a team that doesn't use Kaveh's personal kit but it is good enough to 36 star the abyss without problems ^ ^
As someone who NEVER get into doing the Abyss regularly and even cannot get motivated for the theater either, the only meta I am interested in is the meta around the characters I actually enjoy.
Most Meta character I really do not care about because they are just not to my liking in terms of gameplay or design.
I am also not a fan of having to constantly swap characters every second, so I like to play with one Main DPS and then sub DPS for the rest
But give me a good set up I can do for a character I actually want to play? Sure!
As a Eula main I agree with this video ❤
The abyss has grown so easy that my personal meta is just seeing how much damage my Ganyu can do in a single hit. 153k (no melt) buffed by C4 Xilonen and C3 Shenhe now.
In the end, it's important to know the META so you can make your team better even if it doesn't have the best characters. My favorite example of this is F2P Keqing's channel. No one is seriously going to say Noelle or Keqing are top-tier DPSs like Neuvillette or Arlecchino (or Alhaitham). However, if you know how to play them right, give them the right supports (some of which are META), you have 36* Abyss clears consistently.
11:48 I also love Kaveh. I use him in Nilou team, but personally his "best team" for me is Kaveh, Fischl, Xianyun and Furina. I call it Non-Quickbloom, because it has electro, hydro and dendro but the only hyperbloom trigger is xianyun's Swirls, which aren't that often. Yet Kaveh's skill can pop the seeds to help him heal more and not let the seeds go to waste. And his skill has a perfect CD of 4 plunge + skill + 4 plunge, it's very satisfying in my opinion.
My personal disappointment is Chongyun. I don't want Shenhe and I refuse to use Bennett/Xiangling, and I've been trying teams that should work with Chongyun (as a supp or plunge dps) but it just isn't enough to clear abyss. I'm hoping Mavuika will buff him, honestly.
Like, imagine Mavuika buffs everyone's ATK, so a team with Chongyun, Emilie, Xianyun and Mavuika, she'd buff literally everyone's damage/plunge buff output. I hope it's something like that.
The only reason one should pay attention to meta is if you cant fully clear the endgame modes.
As the extra pulls come in handy from clearing the bi weekly content loop.
But if you have been clearing for ages, meta doesnt matter. Meta is just advice on which characters will help you clear the endgame.
Until this day i never use hyperbloom, burgeon, spread, quicken team, it's hard to understand and i still enjoy playing this game 🤔
idk, I play genshin three years now and I like building characters more for being able to use them in an open world and never for the abyss. I even regret for once pulling for the abyss, back in the days when ayaka was meta I pulled her just cause everyone had such a positive opinion on her but now I barely use her even in the open world. more fun dps characters have their teams preset but ayaka doesn't cause I just don't like her anymore for now. the more I think of the abyss the more I see why the devs one day said it's frustrating some players, it does frustrate some players, like, I clear anything open world and theatre related excellently but floor 12th on three stars? nah, guess pay to win, girlie... if the abyss had no primos I wouldn't even touch it but theatre on the other hand is so fun with how you have to manage a limited roster of chars and use reactions you probably don't use every day. the current one with overload and mono geo?? a slay, mono geo is my strongest team just because I've spent years for itto's team and he was my first ever limited 5 star and a dps who I love using even now! the abyss seems very dull, if your teams suck for the current one you literally can't do anything. don't even try telling me "but some four star teams are still able to clear it", in how many attempts? in 30? thanks, once I have a roadblock in the abyss I just quit and never come back. the last time I tried to fight till last star with actual passion ended up in 35 stars. just one left for a satisfaction. but I tried and tried and tried once again. I couldn't just anything, on my acc that team couldn't be adjusted any further, unless I get a signature weapon for a dps who I care about a bit less than about my main who also is sigweaponless... you know what I gained from these 35 stars? disappointment. not the satisfaction for finally being so close to a win. but I still hate it that I couldn't do anything to it. retrying the abyss this many times seemed like madness and I don't want to come back to such a state. I fear probably my first 36 stars won't satisfy me either, cause in the next phase the enemies might be even harder or not suit for my acc. I mean I'm definitely not the target audience for that endgame mode
I remember thinking noelle's spin to win is the most broken thing in the game when i started lmao
Great balanced video! I think the issue is one extreme to the other. Meta is useless in Genshin so it is far more realistic to distinguish the IMPLICATIONS of dmg comparisons = what difference does it actually make?
Is the goal to succeed the challenge or overcome a self-imposed challenge? Is it speed? Is it navigating boss mechanics? Are you on mobile/console/pc? Because if the optimal team only shaves off a few more seconds in Spiral, then it's not really that big a deal - the fastest speed is not necessary - only if a season of Spiral is so hard that even veterans are struggling to make time, but even then, the issue is not just generically speed-running, it's usually due to the boss mechanic (moving bosses, AOE vs single target, shields, etc.). Instead of "meta" there should simply be dmg comparisons/utility depending on the need.
On the one hand, play whoever you like, BUT with the honest caveat that it might require more investment/resets/skill to beat harder content for new players who don't have a lot to work with at first.
On the other hand, knowing what teams/characters do the most damage overall, is great, BUT there are categories of dmg to consider depending on the context. DMG discussions also don't make you superior because if anything, OP builds/teams requires less of the player... show me you beating spiral 12 with C0 4*s on 4* weapons, then you can act all high-and-mighty lol. The irony when they proceed to tell other players: "skill issue." Genshin is not a finger dexterity contest. Some players like strict, calculated rotations and using hacks like opening the handbook UI to speed up ultimate animations, others like me like a bit of unga-bunga chaos which is why I like Navia!
Theory crafting and "meta" analysis can be really fun for people who enjoy the "math" of the game and see kits&calcs as a puzzle to solve. Dmg comparisons are actually useful for most players who likely have less ideal artifacts (ha). Plus the characters were designed with specific kits and math so to act like it doesn't matter makes no sense - knowing how they work and what things boost their dmg is not in opposition to playing who you like, because it can help you maximize the character you like.
So being anti-optimal dmg is just as ridiculous as being a "meta slave." Both extremes try to make the game into something it was never intended to be. Genshin is not a competitive leaderboard combat game, but combat is still a core part of the game so it's not just a casual open world story game either. Enjoy both or prefer some aspects more than others, that's fine, but your fav parts of the game are not superior to the aspects other players prefer.
I would experiment with more teams if it was possible to do that without first grinding for a month to build a character that might not end up working. I'd like to try out DPS Kachina, but I'm already putting all my resin towards other characters atm, so it's not possible for me to experiment with that.
I've also always wanted to try out a proper freeze team, but I simply don't have access to the characters I want to try. So I'm stuck with what I have and I'm incentivised to pull for the meta characters since I still want to beat the hardest content and I don't have the primos to afford any bad pulls
So, I really don't care about meta but I agree that it's something that has a relevant influence on where the game is going and how a lot of people play. So it's important to not ignore it completely. The only thing that really irks me about it, is when players who care about it are looking down on others who don't. Second to that is people ignoring characters because they're not commonly acknoledged as strong.
I see people trash-talk characters (for example, current banner 4-star Dori) to new players. But with the gacha, sometimes you gotta work with what you have. And surely, if you enjoy the game and want to give advice to others, maybe don't bash the characters that someone has got to work with?
I've reached the conclusion that playing what is fun to me is what's most important and watching your streams and videos has definitely influenced that!
Anyways, thank you for your thoughts on this topic. Well thought out and entertaining to watch 🥰
Meta is good for grinding and spiral abyss otherwise I don’t care at all.
This isnt directly related to Genshin, but from a discussion I had with someone about the upcoming version of HSR and the limited 5 stars in that version. They said that there was only really one character worth pulling in that update, namely Aventurine. I do think Aventurine is probably the strongest character there, and the one that is used in the best teams, but here is where Genshin comes into the picture. Saying someone is weak, or especially saying someone isn't worth pulling is really demotivating to hear about a character you like. A strong character doesn't necessarily mean a fun character, and a weaker character doesn't mean a boring character. Genshin is a game, and its meant to be fun, if your main source of fun isn't doing the most damage possible, then you are better off getting the characters you have fun using, whether that is because you like how they look, you like their story, or you like how they play. Whether a character is worth pulling is all up to the individual player.
Once I'm done building my Navia team I'm going to start building Mualani. I got her so that I could do a dual-DPS setup with Yoimiya, using Yoimiya's burst to apply pyro off-field for Mualani's vapes. This will definitely not be meta, but I have an excuse for building a team around using Yoimiya's burst, so that's good enough for me.
Tiger later just made my c0 mualani hit a 700k burst. Thats why people care that shits awesome!
The idea of a meta in a mostly single player PVPless game should not be taken super seriously… Play what makes you feel happy
I got so excited because I can finally get Hu Tao in the second half of 5.1, she hasnt had a rerun since i started playing, I've met her ENG VA, i love everything about her so im sf hype but ofc as soon as I say that on twitter, discord servers im in etc I got like a dozen annoying people going 'Oh just wait for Arlecchino Hu Tao's a waster, Lyney is so much better Hu Tao's not worth your time- NO, I want Hu Tao I'm going to play Hu Tao lol thats the literal best part of this game its using your fav characters
like yes get ur Neuv and Arlecchino and 36 star each abyss but im sorry if i did that each abyss id be so bored😭
YES get your Hu Tao!! Hu Tao and I had a rocky start but I grew to love her 💜 the funniest thing about these people is that for a very long time Hu Tao herself was the ultimate meta pyro DPS, and people would tell others not to get Yoimiya or build diluc and deifnitely not Klee are you crazy, because "Hu Tao is better than all of them put together and the only one worth playing" 😂
@@saurusness I hope I get the VA luck from meeting her English VA😭my thought process is always gonna be, yeah Arle may be better then Hu Tao now, but that doesn't mean Hu Tao suddenly gets worse! What's the difference gonna be? I clear five seconds faster? I still get the same amount of primos😅and you know what, after Hu Tao im going after Mavuika bc i LOVE her but then 1000% Yoimiya is my goal, why? BC ITS YOIMIYA AND SHES ADORABLE i dont care if she's only good in single target😭
I'm just really bad at building characters
Meta in genshin to me means :
When im lazy i pick my best team clear abyss 1 try no effort at all sometimes speedrun under 2 minutes total both sides
And when i want to play any char, i can build team around any char i want n still can clear abyss
I pulled for kazuha... and while he's fun for the specific purpose of clearing leylines, otherwise i still regret pulling him. "He buffs so much" and i literally do not care. My abyss teams don't use him at all and I don't do showcases.
Granted I also still can't 36 star lmao but even my best teams (neuvi carry, diluc plunge, hyperbloom) just dont use him.
Also i dont like the feeling of having pulled a character "for nothing" when they eventually get powercrept, so i really, really prefer just wishing for characters that i like.
I mean, if my level 20 Collie can help me make a hyper bloom team, i ain't listening to someone telling me to get Nahida. Nuh uh.
The point is that the cost is too high. Whether it's the cost of acquiring a character or the cost of building them. The expectation of 0.6% is low, and most players pull more than eighty times to get 5 stars, and they can lose 50/50.
7:05&11:46Another point mentioned here is that 4-star on-field DPS has a lower cap, but they are just as expensive to build.
If artifact farming weren't so bad, players might be willing to try more. But these days, most players just want to find a meta character and get rid of the misery of Sisyphus as soon as possible. To put it bluntly, that's why the player community is so disgusted with Imaginarium Theatre
Just so you know, meta stands for most effective tactic available.
At the end of the day, the meta is interesting and perfectly fine to be discussed.
The problem is, was, and always will be the spreadsheet impact players who blindly only follow the meta and militantly enforce it upon other people who recognise that Bennett is a boring af no personality liability clown who actively makes the game feel worse to play by restricting your movement (for example) - that's when the meta suddenly doesn't matter at all.
Because now the problem is these people are aggressively telling you how to play the game and actively disssuading you from this foreign concept to them: having fun.
I rarely wish for new characters. In Sumeru, I didn't wish for anyone. In Fontaine, I got The Raiden Shogun C2, Navia and Kazuha. During the recent Shogun banner, I got Engulfing Lightning. I'll never 36 star the abyss because I don't have the characters for it and that's OK. In the recent Headache Theater, I was only able to reach act 2. That thing has so much randomness, it's not funny.
I think meta is important for everybody, not that you must follow it blindly but if you have a favorite character, lets say Xinyan, yeah she is undeniably bad, but if you understand the meta you can use the best supports for her making your favorite characters at least usable, and despite the "genshin is easy" try watching any new player, the game is not easy for them.
I believe that there's a big difference between "i like that character and play it optimally no matter the meta" and "i like that character, i don't understand how they work, nor do i care, i don't give them proper build or team, so why do i struggle?" (indeed, i wonder why). Don't get me wrong, i don't care what characters people use, as long as they don't force their opinion on me (be it waifu or meta), but i do believe everyone should have some knowledge about the game and how to build their favorite characters. And that's where this whole problem rises. I roughly divide meta players and casual playes on two groups:
People who just give advice if asked and people who give their advice even if they weren't asked. Both apply to both sides, bc waifu gamers tend to criticize meta players as much the same as last one criticize the first ones. But usually, casual player is the one who starts the conflict. Why? Well, in most cases they whine that they can't clear some content, which automatically triggers knowledgeable playersto share their knowledge. But then it turns out that any advice is pointless, so why such people keep whining is beyond me. At the same time, some people who don't see beyond meta can come to a person and shame them for playing this or that character. Which is also wrong.
So at the end of the day: play whoever you want, but do your research on builds and team compositions at least. And stop whining if you don't follow the "rules" of the game. It's not the game's fault. And for meta players - just mind your own business, give advice only if you truly confirm the person needs it. And i hope both sides will have fun that way.
Xilonen is excellent, but in using her over the last I do think that she's... mildly overhyped. While she does buff more than Kazuha at equivalent cons/refinements (whom she is compared to often), you really can feel the loss of Kaz's CC, of his extra off-field elemental application, and the significant amounts of damage he can personally contribute in the right teams. Conversely, her healing unlocks opportunities where Kazuha is a poor fit. Her power level isn't that far off of where it needs to be, considering her element actively does not contribute to most teams.
I believe the biggest danger of the meta is the hype it creates can result in people overestimating some characters and disregarding even strong alternative options. Variety is what keeps this game interesting. Because of that, Imaginareum Theater has given Genshin a new lease on life for me. It really keys in to the parts of Genshin's character building and combat I love the most.
100% agreed - Xilonen is really good, but CC is SO important, especially for characters who have close-quarters AoE attacks (e.g. Ayaka's burst just demolishes enemies within its path), so I still feel like Kazu makes more of a difference! Definitely nice to have them both though, since like you say they have different niches!
The craziest thing is that meta is just outright wrong sometimes. You'll hear people say X is X's best team and it's just not. People will recommend artifact sets that are just not the best. People will say a character is bad, no one will pull cons for them, then say they're worse than the character they pulled C2 R1 for. People will suggest you build a character designed to be a sub DPS as a support and then say they have bad damage. It's been feelscrafting from start to finish.
And then those opinions end up affecting popularity in a feedback loop. There's so much more variety to meta that meta slaves are not aware of because they didn't sit and do the math and build characters correctly. And then we get less characters with similar designs, they get less screen time, etc.
I started a guide channel for new players, and the meta has me trapped between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I want to tell new players not to pick up characters who are "objectively" bad, but on the other I don't want them to lose sight of having fun if playing the "Most Effective Team Available" isn't something they enjoy. So how to advise, while also not losing people in the shuffle? No amount of disclaimers at the start of a video can ever offset the disappointment if a content creator bills a favorite character as "bad."
I may point some of my videos here to help emphasize the (non-)importance of these things.
I mean, I mostly take meta as long as I can make my favorite characters shine. Other than that, I'm fine.
For instance, I'll be gladly ignoring Bennet's circle impact or the Xiangling copypasta, since I don't really enjoy their gameplays
My favorite character is Qian and I get so tired when I always see people like team building channels that focus on Meta just dunk on her. Shes cute and fun to play and she’s my most versatile character with good dps while still being an amazing healer but my god is it hard to listen to anyone who isn’t a Qiqi appreciator because of her “50/50 ruiner” title and being “worst character”
I think it's better to view the meta as a way of understanding the game at a deeper level, rather than seeing it as an orthodoxy of the "correct" way to play the game. When you take the time to learn the intricacies of reactions, elemental gauge, internal cooldowns, artifact sets, stats, you're gonna have the knowledge and skill you need to make your favourite characters work well even if they're on the weaker end of the spectrum. The truth of the matter is just slapping together whatever random characters you want might work in the overworld (although you could still struggle even there) but it definitely won't fly in the abyss. "Just play what you want" is poor advice that makes it seem like all characters are equally viable and that your team compositions don't matter, which is just misleading, untrue, and I think gives people inaccurate expectations and sets them up for failure.
In my experience the people who are most likely to play "off meta" teams are the meta players. If your favourite character is Chongyun, you might struggle to get decent results if you don't know what you're doing, and the abyss can be hell. Good luck feels-crafting your way to 36 stars with a main DPS Ningguang team.
More casual players are more likely to just pull Neuvillette and stick to well established top meta teams and builds because you know that's gonna work without having to get into the weeds about snapshotting and which artifact sets proc off field or things like that. It's not lost on me that a lot of the people who decry "the meta" will at the same time have character showcases with Mualani, Furina, Kazuha, Yelan, Nahida, all with completely bog-standard builds.
Which is totally fine, however you wanna play is up to you and no one should look down on you for it. But at the same time, Genshin has such deep, interesting and unique mechanics and I think it's a bit of a shame that is often not appreciated. I think if more players gave it a fair attempt, they would see that the meta is fun.
Call me biased cuz I consider myself a meta player, but I don't think it's accurate to say that meta players are primarily the ones going around shaming others for how they play. Sure it happens, but the most common derogatory term you hear used to shame people for how they play is "meta slave" by far.
Meta guides helped me "play who I like".
My Dori is on 90, my Sucrose is on 90 and my Razor is on 90-
I would have pulled for Xilonen even tough she was the weakest character to be released. I pulled Shenhe for her hips and no other reason.
Anyway, I really appreciate how you treat any subject based on your personal experience unlike the popular opinion. Most discussions are tiresome and repetitive already, you are one of the few that bring something new to the table.
The real reason why meta matters is cost. Any character can clear any content, but the level of investment required is vastly different. Xinyan can 36 star abyss, but would you rather get R5 redhorn + C3 furina to do that, or would you rather clear with C0 neuvillette on prototype amber? Even that wouldn't have mattered if this was a game like breath of the wild where equipment is unlocked through gameplay, but given that this is a gacha game, trying to max out an underwhelming character is almost the equivalent of saying "I spend thousands of dollars on an anime gambling simulator to play it inefficiently."
That is not to say you shouldn't play a character who's "off-meta." You should always get, build, and play your favorite character no matter what the "meta" tells you. It's just that if your favorite is unfortunate enough to be bottom tier, you need to have the self discipline to be satisfied with never being able to clear content with them and just stick to the overworld. A lot of players can't come to terms with that, and as a result, they start spending uncontrollably to purchase upgrades to "prove a point" about their character. The "meta" is there as a sanity check to steer players away from this path.
There is an argument to be made for saving up long-term (likely 1-2+ years) to get the upgrades required to play "off-meta." However, there's still the issue where you need to be satisfied with not making any meaningful progress for a long time. Additionally, since you've spent all of your capital on one "off-meta" team, your other side needs to be a team that's relatively strong at very low investment, which means you will most likely end up having to follow the "meta" anyway.
Let me remind you that regardless of what your income level is, you have more productive ways to spend your money than on a virtual gambling machine where any products you obtain cease to exist the minute a server is shut down. I personally don't think very highly of the "meta" in this game and I like a lot of the weaker characters, but given the predatory nature of the monetization model, it's necessary to recognize the most efficient ways to work around it.
And please don't lie to yourself. My quest menu is emptier than zhongli's wallet and the only way you can find an unopened chest in my overworld is by hacking the game. I know how many primogems you can get for free. If you like and play a character, be proud of it. If you saved for years to make a character work, be proud of yourself. Just don't go around yelling "my F2P eula clears in 2 minutes" with missing initial top-up bonuses and R5 battlepass weapons. That's how you spiral into a cycle of denial and addiction.
Honestly, I think it is easier these days to play "off-meta" then it has ever been, with the meta being defined as the most optimal stuff, all around. We have a lot of different characters now, more supports, more off-field DPS types. And so quite a few characters have viable enough teams these days, and a variety of them. And, of course, there's off-meta (less popular characters to use on-field that aren't that bad if you know what you're doing, like Cyno, Ayato, Dehya, and so on...) and there's off-meta (most four star DPS characters).
But there's a catch there. If your goal is to do as much as possible, you do need to know various meta things. Neuv is meta in part because he really requires little knowledge of meta. You get him, maybe get Kaz/Furina/Xilonen, and you're pretty much good to waterbeam your way to victory. But if you are playing Xinyan? You'd better know her optimal stuff, and how to use enemy AI against itself, and so on. It takes far more knowledge to do. So the less overall meta your character choice is, the more specific meta you need to compensate.
Meta is about the abyss if you don't do it you can not care but it's hard to clear the abyss without going meta .
I don't particularly care about the meta, since i only use characters i like, though i did cave recently and build Bennett, he's just annoyingly necessary for a lot of the characters recently, i wish we'd get an alternative soon so i can bench him again.
This game doesn't NEED the meta talk, sure it's nice to go through on what character can synergize better with the other and that's completely fine, games like Genshin doesn't surely need to be taken serious, Because anyone can be good unless you build them right, generally speaking I think it's meaningless, This game requires you to have fun and that is the main point about this game, the hardcore players have the end game part, It's not going anywhere, bit other than that, enjoy the game how it is and don't feel down but certain characters you don't have just to stick with the meta, cuz it's not worth it.
Well said 👏 To be honest it's saddening to hear people bashing cryo for this reason. I've heard a lot of comments lately justifying hoyo's refusal to rerun certain cryo units because cryo "needs a rework." Like, I'm sure it does, but is that any reason to deny people having fun with units they enjoy playing? I wish people weren't so obsessed with meta that they imply it's a good idea to be without certain characters altogether simply because they aren't meta...
@@MJDanvers It's weird too - the only reason cryo has been underwhelming recently is that they've been leaning towards enemies who cannot be frozen. Against different enemies, it'd be absolutely overpowered! And I still use my Ayaka team in the abyss pretty regularly, even with the endless stream of bosses lmao
@@raptori okay because I was wondering about that. I've been playing for a year but I never heard this many people talking about cryo being "bad" until now, when they bring it up to excuse these rerun decisions. I even had someone essentially call me out as "willfully ignorant" about cryo's problems, but that's not true. I just genuinely never heard about this being a problem until now lol. To hear it's less because of cryo being bad and more because of enemies being resistant to frozen... it seems like hoyo has purposefully steered cryo out of the meta for some reason. I wonder why that is.
But thats just ignorant. People have their own ways to have fun to play this game. And surely some also has fun talking and discussing about meta just as you guys like the game for everything else. If you see a video talking about how weak or strong a character is you could just you know... Don't mind them? Like I don't know why is it so hard just to do that. You can also just acknowledged how strong or weak a character is and still have fun with them yknow.
@@Bravo6 Some people do have fun playing meta, and that's fine and good, no one's taking that away from them. Playing super powerful teams and characters is very satisfying, to be sure. But the issue arises when people are made to feel they're playing the game "wrong" because they're not doing it the meta way. This comes from people putting pressure on other players and ridiculing their approach to the game. No one is bullying meta players afaik, but people who want to do their own thing apart from meta do get bullied over it, unfortunately.
The only thing I see you needing meta for is for the extra primos from the end game abyss and theater content