I don't think there's a single burst animation more satisfying in the entire game. The arm cross, the sky being all apocalyptic, and that big ol meteor.
Corrosion exists and you can die from it on field. You could also just learn how to dodge better. Sometimes it would be better to have another support to buff your team? Of course it depends on the team comp though too, geo resonance can be good. I don't own Zhongli, I've played friends' abyss with their Zhonglis and frankly it just takes up extra time to place the shield when you could be dealing damage. I'm probably alone on this opinion though.
@@pechumie nah you’re def not alone, even a lot of the recent “meta” team comps haven’t been utilizing Zhongli since he becomes way less useful the more skilled you are at the game. once you learn enemy attack patterns you can just dodge, he doesn’t add any substantial damage to your rotations so you’re wasting time with him on the team instead of slotting in a different support, and with res shred becoming more common among new characters, the 20% on his shield becomes less valuable. even geo res has it’s problems - most geo characters suffer from the same issues as zhongli, where their utility doesn’t outweigh the damage deficit from slotting them into the team, and having multiple geo constructs can mess up reactions through crystalize. for early game and comfort runs, Zhongli is unparalleled, but in late game content he becomes less useful, which is counterintuitive to a shielder but it makes sense as recent abysses have just been giant dps checks
8:40. It actual does have combat application because the hold skill doesn’t just destroy ore it drains Geo from surrounding targets so you can instantly break hillichurl rock shields, fatui geo shields and deal massive damage to Lawachurl geo shields
@@chreese37 I think he's talking about the enemies. They are super weak anyway you don't need zhong li just for that. That's probably why no one talks about the sheild charge. It is cool to know tho, I'll keep it in mind for when I get him 😄.
Many boss' have been given indirect ways of lowering hp. signora heat and sheer cold, azhdaha elemental damage on shielded units, wolfhound boss corrosion, etc.
@@Soundwave1900 Agreed, i just bring in Jean just in case but usually the corrosion does like 1/9 of my health, and the shield still provides unlimited interrupt resist, protection from every other non corrosion damage source and the res shred, the only way they nerf shields is doing an enemy/ boss that just flat out removes shields on attack but that would piss of the community so much
It would be as simple as floor 11 with the ley line disorder of: "all shield strength is reduced by 60%". That would make it significantly harder and force people (including me) to actually think about dodging again instead of just hold E and tank everything
@@lucasbinder6151 yep most of his videos have flaws in logic and a lot of personal biases. but he's just a guy, you can't expect him to be an all-knowing god and you should require it from him. he's giving his two cents. i disagree with a whole load of stuff he says. but then again, i have always strayed from the meta in every game ever. meta is usually shallow and pretty stupid, that's something i cannot overlook, specially in pvp games, where people are so glued to meta that they don't know what to do when you do something different that's unexpectedly powerful. unfortunately, this game doesn't have pvp, so i can't punish people for being too meta, but that's okay i guess.
I’m a casual player and play this game to relax. I don’t want to cancel animations or dodge at all. So, for me the greatness of Zhongli is pretty self-evident. Since I pulled him he never left my party.
You are not alone with this type of thinking! I also play this game just to relax. Besides the character animations in this game overall are really nice. But, even though I have him, and use him a lot, very often I leave him at the tea house in Liyue as Genshin Impact mobs for the most part are really stupid and it really isn't hard to dodge them.
@@gilroyscopa as a person who got stuck in the archon quests regularly because this game was too challenging, I don’t know what to recommend. I suppose you can just not use his shield and tap E instead of holding it.
@@artemis1993 As a mobile player, it’s still very easy to enjoy the game. I don’t have much issue with the controls, but now characters are super hard to play, let alone have fun with. Still, when lag kicks in it’s good to have a shield to block any dmg I could be taking without knowing.
@@artemis1993 I'm a mobile player and sometimes my controls just give up on me and do whatever they want. When I try to move my character in a certain direction they walk in the opposite direction or don't move at all, most of the time the game even lags which leads to me taking heavy damage. Now that I got Zhongli I hope playing will be a little easier
@@artemis1993 I play with controller on iPhone 13 pro max. I can’t play the game without controller. I can’t 36 star with touch controls. It is horrendous
I just love the fact that he's voiced by Keith Silverstein the man and legend who (apart from having a godly voice) also voices Shen from League - another tank who protects their teammates (well, not in my rankeds tho). It just makes me happy idk
Having Zhongli is SO NICE when you have new/neglected characters you want to use before being leveled out or can take on usually 1 higher domain than recommended for your team. I think he helps me get more versatility for my other 3 slots so I can be more experimental
I've been on max world level with no character over 80/80 and no zhongli, and I handle level 90 domains fine in sub-1-minute (without food for most domains), and have 36-starred some abysses. He's good but don't underestimate the free version (Noelle) or the multitude of overpowered 4*s (like xiangling and ningguang, my main dpses in abyss).
@@vitriolicAmaranth I'm not saying you need Zhongli, just that if you have an underdeveloped characters you are mid build he is really nice, or when I was much lower level I could do the higher domains
@@Barni2212 The 80/80 thing isn't really tryhard, it's more laziness than anything. My main DPSes are Ning and Ayaka and I hate both of their ascension bosses so I've avoided their final ascension, I don't use any meta supports and Noelle does just fine at 80/80 with a nearly unbreakable shield. Xiangling is an absolutely broken sub DPS, so much so that even at 80/80 with crescent pike she's singlehandedly carried my second stringers to 36* some abysses. As good as the national team is, I think some people still underestimate how much of that is just xiangling.
@@BreMue My point is more that the benefits he provides can be had from some 4*s and even free characters. Maybe not all in one package, but people overlook Noelle a lot. Just wish we got the KFC Noelle skin. Don't like her default outfit.
I don’t think he needs to be nerfed at all. He’s the epitome of unga bunga. You put up his shield and you don’t have to think about mechanics for the next 20 seconds. He’s perfect for people who play the game to relax and just like seeing their characters do attacks. He’s really strong for most players, but he actually falls out a bit with whales, as for speedrunning he isn’t very good, as the resistance shred isn’t competitive with other supports in terms of damage. He covers most content in the game, but has a few niches where he’s not great, and for maximised damage he’s not one of the best supports for most teams. He works really well as an op but not omnipotent character who does his role as an archon justice.
also note that a "meta" exists because we're scarce in resources. if everyone was able to build every character in, say, a few days to a week of investment, everyone would be "good" or at least ok. but because not all of us can resin refresh or get the best weapon, the most optimal way to play would be to use characters that can make do with little and still return a lot of value. due to being a 5* char, they will usually have higher stats and better/more synergistic ascension stats, and they need this difference to justify their 5* price. thus making them easier to build and a great choice for most teams
exactly. i'm dying to stop farming for childe but it's been months since i got him and i only have half assed artifacts on him. just yesterday i got albedo so now i have to start farming for him (cause i didnt get to prefarm. thanks, childe). that's all on top of talents and boss mats which all require resin and rng (also i dont think resin is bad, just the layers on layers of rng makes it feel like youre wasting it every time you use it). so of course we want to build the best characters. there's a considerable amt of timed content that exists outside of abyss and half assed units are probably not going to make it in time so if we're gonna use a half assed unit at least let them be a good one, right? also the layers of rng goes like this when farming artifacts. you have to get the right set, then the right piece, then the right main stat, then the amount of substats (3-4), if it had 3 then you have to get the right 4th stat, then once you have 4 you have to get the right substat levelled, then hope the next substat that's levelled is also right, then the next and next, until the artifact is lvl 20. oh and for every time the substat gets levelled theres rng for how much it increases too. that means you can have 2 artifacts that only rolled into the crit dmg substat but chances are they arent the same number. another reason is because the number each substat starts with is also rng. luckily artifact farming i think is the only thing that layered but the fact that it's the main part of your character's dmg which is the one thing you'll constantly be increasing makes it such a gruelling experience esp when you have multiple characters you want to build.
@@renoirrr couldn’t agree more! Unless you can afford resin refresh daily or are super lucky, it’s almost impossible to build your newly obtained 5star b4 new banner drops. The only method to counter this I can think of is pre-farming, but then again you’d have to have no use for resins to be able to pre-farm. This game is just a never-ending hell of grinding and gambling lmao
@@renoirrr As a note, when you're still building up characters, it's best to not try to perfect everyone right away You'll get more damage from a synergistic average team (2 pc elemental, 2 pc atk with just the right main stats, or 4 pc if you get lucky) than going for perfection right away and letting everyone else rot (even with albedo, I'd say to go for just 2 pc archaic 2 pc husk unless you run out of stuff to do) Build on low rolls and slowly pass +20 artifacts down do other characters or save them instead of instantly foddering them, and it'll help a lot in the long run. Artifacts may be rng but genshin is one of the few games where equipment isn't class 'locked', and you can swap gear around infinitely without needing to pay to unequip them Paimon.moe is a good site to use for builds as well, if you go with build based on what drops instead of aiming for something specific, stuff gets way faster I'd also heavily recommend building supports and off field DPS overall, they offer so much team versatility that a main DPS wouldn't lock you into, it's just that main dps often 'come online' easier
To be fair, if this was a gacha game with infinite resources, the game would be balanced around a higher powerlevel, so you'd have a straight forward grind, but then you'd also *have* to grind
I was a day 1 zhongli believer. Between Keith Silverstein's immaculate voice acting, his fantastic kit and his beautiful and tragic lore I couldn't help but make him my main.
250$ pickaxe and was so bad you lost damage by using him at all with a shield not big enough to tank things vs diona's shield of similar size with her cryo 250% in the first abyss. good times. shame vars is sugar coating it so much with playing a whale account and so little game knowledge he actually thinks zhongli needs a nerf. crazy how spending thousands of dollars on a game F2P can clear and get max rewards makes you think the game is too easy.
@@richardjones8846 I mean i spent 0 and got him. And it didn't matter whether he was good or bad. I liked him, he was a comfortable character to use. Plus i wont lie Diona skeevs me out, if you like her good on ya but I don't feel ok using a literal child.
It too easy. You can easily 36 star abyss with only 4* unit and 4* weapon .... if I remember correctly jinjinx 36 star abyss with 4 4*unit with 4*weapon last month.
Yeah I mained him too. Everyone is like "vortex vanquisher sux bro" and I went and got it anyway because when I find myself in a tough jam, or want to get the higher difficulty rewards, having him solo is beneficial.
fun facts: talent 13 zhongli burst does 1084% damage, on 5 units this is 5420% ganyu's burst at talent 13 does 5,973% per enemy on and up to 5 for a total of 29,866% beidou's on 2 targets is over 14,000% but yknow.... zhongli's burst is one of the highest vars has seen.
Rather than do guaranteed corrosion damage, I'd rather see some enemies have "shield-breaker" type moves that are designed to do extra damage to shields, but not so much to HP.
Mihoyo,, this one good idea for Dendro XD Vegetables do 'eating' the earth... and the counter would be over-grown that makes dendro do more damage or something by applying dendro to geo.. XD
Make me think about who to bring, which adds more strategy and gameplay. You could easily have one of the two paths of the abyss contain more of such enemies which rewards player choice
@@iluvchess14736 uhhh, im Chinese and he pronounces it pretty well (if you ignore the four 声) in the ganyu vid. Idk if he pronounces it well here though, too lazy to scroll through the vid looking for him to say ganyu lol
I agree with the overshadowing. I was hoping that a well-built Thoma could replace Zhongli for my Hu Tao Team, but Zs shields are bigger, have more uptime, are easier to manage, reduce enemy defense... So in the end Thoma just felt bad in comparison.
I completely agree that Zhongli's shield is just so much better than Thoma's which feels pretty bad, but the main appeal of Thoma is that he can also apply pyro which can then be swirled with an anemo character. So while his shield is obviously not as good, Thoma actually allows Hu Tao do do more damage which I think somewhat makes up for it
I’ve loved him from day one. His aesthetic, his playstyle and the fact it was a unique element (fire burns, water is wet but geo was a new concept) all added to it. But for me, I main my dps Zhongli and triple crown him because I just had so much fun with him. He’s a character that has been perfectly created - his kit, his backstory, his arc - all of it has been so well done. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who says they don’t like zhongli. I’ve met people who think the shield is too strong but they still really like the character. And on top of all that, he can pretty much fit into any comp and still provide a benefit.
also, this isn't standalone and so a bit situational Beidou if you light gras on fire, really big AoE of ore breaking. Made my cor lapis farming way less painful
Spamming that huge rock with mono geo will never not be satisfying. I agree with most of the video, except the res shred removal. You won't ever hear me complain about extra damage when the abyss difficulty keeps going up.
zhongli is the only source outside of geo resonance for geo shred. he doesn't understand the game's mechanics enough but has the audacity to suggest something as stupid as removing the resistance shred from zhongli's shield. half the mechanics he tries to explain are not how they work and skips most of the reasons other units are ACTUALLY overpowered. he has a hu tao with a homa and ganyu with amos... obviously the game is going to be easy for him when the game is designed for the average player; this is why the game's difficulty is slowly going up over time since power is gained over time and not how a vocal minority of players complain about "game is for whales" when they're trying to 36 star abyss with their nonsense teams. then you've got the flip side here of "game too easy" when he's clearly whaled the shit out of his account. he dead ass said the game isn't F2P friendly when half the meta teams are majority and sometimes all 4 star units that don't need constellations, some even use 4 stars weapons as best in slot.
@@richardjones8846 Zhongli is the only way for physical to get -60% against ruin enemies as well, Zhongli without res shred would only have uptime to overtake noelle, but at that point you could just use albedo for constant crystallize
when i got zhongli when I started the game, I just breezed through everything without a sweat. But when I started doing the spiral abyss and had to make a team without zhongli, I wasn't expecting it to be this hard for people without zhongli
I love that you brought the style point. Everyone argues he's just, "Ignore the game mechanics" button. Yes he is. BUT LOOK AT THIS MAN. WHERE DO YOU GET THIS CLASS AND ATTITUDE?
Zhongli is the only character to this day that can resonate with other characters' skills. His ability to make other other characters structures do more than they already do is insane and he is the only one who can do this
microwave team is a meme and needs a lot of investment to work on units that can't break constructs. mihoyo knows that geo constructs are a failed design and why you've not seen another one since albedo. cap at 3 and bosses look at them they despawn, try to spawn them inside a large enemy or another one that's down they despawned instead of just to the side and ignore enemy collision so characters like albedo aren't actually useless against bosses.
@@giulia1361 true, tho I have to admit, using Geo Traveler + sub dps Zhongli whenever you have to defend the monolith in the abyss is kinda fun lol nothing can touch it and god have mercy on them if they try to get in
Character that punches the ground and makes it like a, ummm, "quick sand"ish. Enemy movement becomes slower in it. Ps: idk if quick sand is the right word. What I have in mind is the sand that pulls you in the more you move.
I was playing through the archon quests 2 weeks ago and Zhongli is definitely the best developed 5 star character story. You learn about the Salt god and earth dragon his involvement with them. How he built Liyue. its all great. Then you do Childe's story and its just baby sitting his brother for most of it.
Zhongli is actually insane in the buffing department too. I've seen others' Geo Travelers do the same damage as my crowned one with higher crit dmg, simply because I don't have Zhongli. Same goes for my Albedo.
As a Zhongli main, I appreciate this video, thanks man, oh and the fact that the Pokémon Explorers of Sky Temporal Tower theme is playing in the background makes all the more perfect 👌
Love ur videos. Ur way of explaining things is really good and it shows that u care about the game and care about the characters when u make videos for genshin. So thank u for all the hardwork u do.
MAN they should have given this to kokomi. Like she inspires her troops and fills them with confidence. So naturally they would be less likely to flinch. What a smart idea on your part… and a missed opportunity
Venti is a… “Serviceable” character? I think that may be a bit of an understatement. Venti’s burst is better CC than Planet Befall in the vast majority of cases, with much better MV/s.
Nope it isn't they just both have their own CCs that's better in either situations. Saying venti has a better CC isn't true either when Zhongli can petrify through shields and even bigger enemies when venti can't gather these enemies which plague higher floors of abyss and harder content.
vars doesn't know enough about genshin impact because he whaled on an account and thinks the game is too easy while actually saying "not F2P friendly" while the game is literally designed for F2P. i may have been a little eccentric when commenting on his keqing video but tried to point out all the things he was mistakenly presenting as facts. such as JUST on this video a 20% res shred on zhongli's shield is not a 25% damage increase.... ever. he knows nothing about elemental gauge theory, thinks corrosion can't kill you, and kokomi is a bad unit despite being used in one of the strongest meta teams to date that doesn't even use bennet or xingqiu. he dead ass has the audacity to say zhongli should be nerfed while saying "he has a 7-10k shield" when it's actually over 30k at talent 10 and 50k hp , not even taking into consideration teams that use beidou for a 39% DR
@@richardjones8846 not F2P friendly does NOT mean it's not easy. The game IS easy, if you put the time into it. Whales just have an easier time with it because they can get any character they want + they basically have infinite resin, while F2P players need to save for their fav characters and cant really afford using their primos for resin. a 20% shred is not a 25% damage boost yeah but it's really not that big of a deal to get upset over, it's still a damage boost all the same. elemental gauge theory is not important and never called kokomi bad. You literally have this boner for hating on him for no reason
7:21 A small correction here, that's not how damage resistance shred works. First of all, resistance shred beyond 0% is halved and enemy with common resistances (10%) under effect of ZL shield would have -5% resistance, which results in ~17% dmg increase (VV in the same conditions provides around 27% increase). And it's the best case scenario (technically 20% would be better, but i can't remember enemies with 20% res from the top of my head) i.e. you have no other ways to shred res and enemy has pretty low res. Against enemies with high res his shred is too weak and if you're able to shred enemy res below 0% already (by using superconduct, VV, geo resonance etc.) his shred gives less then 10% dmg increase. So overall it's a nice bonus, but the only time when it's really impactful is when you need to shred anemo resistance for anemo carry, because it's the only way to increase anemo dmg and the only other way to shred anemo res iirc is Jean C4...and it's Jean C4, duh, good luck with this one.
My biggest and only regret in my Genshin history was pulling on standard while Zhongli had his banner... I joined at the end of 1.4 because of Childe and I also liked Zhongli. I didn't know if he was good and at the time all i knew about genshin's combat was that it is about elemental reactions and geo can't do any aka it felt useless to me. Childe and Keqing were my two faves at the time and I did all my early game pulls on standard all the way until 2 weeks before kazuha dropped. I got 2 monas and a wolfs gravestone, thinks I don't use til this day. Now with Albedo and Keqing coming home I have every single 5-star I wanted - except for Zhongli. :') There were rumors about 2.4 having xiao, ganyu AND zhongli, but then the rumors about him died down real quickly. I have no shield character in the game except for thoma who helps out a little, I have no healer except for bennett and the bit xingqui does, so i've become perfect at dodging - but I do hope he will get a second rerun. I get that the archons are a bit more powerful and it would be almost dumb if they weren't, but Zhongli feels so much more OP compared to Raiden who I have and have build
I plan on saving and pulling for all the archons first before getting anyone else. All the other characters I've got are from regular banner and Childe back when I was newbie and didn't know what I was doing so I wasted all 10K+ of my newbie primos.
I remember when Raiden came out people were like "Omg she's so weak." But like, she's not. I think they realized they went too hard on Zhongli and so they made Raiden busted as hell, but incredibly focused, like she is in the lore. Raiden is almost exclusively focused on the pursuit of eternity and eating Dango, so having her kit also be incredibly focused and energy generation and burst damage makes perfect sense.
Nah C0 raiden is not busted, she is viable but not broken(unlike venti ganyu zhongli kazuya these units are absolutely broken at c0 even with F2P weapons), however after c2 she clearly becomes one of the best units in game even without engulfing lightening.
Almost no one sensible said she was weak at C0. What most people said was she was underwhelming when compared to other archons like Zhongli (broken shielding) and Venti (broken CC) at C0 and is locked behind cons like Eula which still is true. She is absolutely great for non-meta players but as one starts playing efficiently her value starts to decline.
Only reason why Raiden is so popular is because her C1 + C2 is broken and lots of people pulled her C2. If her C2 was in C4 or C6 position, you wouldn't see that much praise to her as you see right now.
I think you covered perfectly how “annoyingly” good our rock dad is. As much as I believe he needs a nerf for gameplay purposes (and definitely not because I don’t have him), I don’t want him to get nerfed. That would only remove his specialty. I feel Mihoyo should design a “diet” form of Zhongdong in a 4 star variant. Preferably in the small body for the hilarity factor.
Zhongli is fine he may have a loaded kit and comfy to use but in terms of power level he usually isnt a BiS member in a team because Anemo unit exist (unless its a hu tao team or Double geo centric or mobile gaming). mihoyo did a great job balancing him. his defense is strong and but his offensive capabilities is low, the pillar does more harm than good (fucking up camera, stealing reaction, disturb combat, unrealiable energy) and the meteor does low damage unless u have a good ratio on him which takes a lot of investment to balance shield + meteor + ER for meteor. hence why most player just build him as shield bot which mean he does negligible damage on a team. his utility is amazing but he aint gonna singlehandedly carry your team. if ur team lack damage he aint gonna boost it by alot, he is there to smooth out ur run. constellation wise, his C2 is a huge QoL that fix a lot of his problem mainly his shield cast time that has long animation (especially if u are affected by cryo) and its justify to build ER on him. if anyone wanna go for const this is the best to get.
Wow~ You may be the first content creator I've seen to consistently pronounce Zhongli and half of the Liyue characters names properly~!! (Aside from all those pronunciation guide videos, but they don't really count, haha.) Kudos for that~! Regarding a possible debuff, I wouldn't mind Zhongli's Dominus Lapidus being nerfed, provided that his auto attack regains the geo element on certain hits in the combo.
Regarding Genshin Character design, I think Mihoyo is already catching on to characters being too versatile and flexible with characters like Bennett and Xingqiu, by creating characters Kujou Sara and Gorou, while right now they may not have much place as supports, when characters like Itto, Yae Miko, and Scaramouche come out assuming they are all DPS, their value and roles will expand with more characters coming out and specialist supports like them will be much more valuable long term
I agree with mostly of what you said. Only thing is the Scaramouche hopium. Don't get your hopes up too much, or else they'll kill him next time he's on screen. But of course, dead characters can also be playable.
@@FrenchDinosaur Sacaramouche is mentioned by Shogun in her voicelines as Kunikuzushi, while he isn't in Childe's, so maybe that means mihoyo decided to make him playable (only playable characters are mentioned by others)
@@FrenchDinosaur i agree lol. scaramouche has a low chance of being playable due to clipping issues with his hat (ha). also since he was teased so long ago (like signora) and hasnt had any official mention of being playable yet, makes me think its unlikely he'll be playable
@@ocurimi ?? not true ?? a lot of characters mention varka, skirk, tsaritsa and we've had no indication of whether they are playable or not, let alone even being released
He has a phenomenal voice actor. Love Zhongli lore. He's been my favorite character in the story. For gameplay I like using him in a Eula, Raiden, Zhongli, Qiqi comp.
Geo daddys voice in eng. Version is amazing, the recent itto 5 star is the only voice that comes close to its awesomeness, however ittos voice is obviously a totally different personality, but seriously the dude nailed it, itto is hilarious
7:14 You made a mistake here. Most enemies have base 10% Resistance. This means damage they take is multiplied by 0.9. If you take away 20% RES, they're left with - 10%. However, negative figures are halved, so damage they take is multiplied by 1.05. The damage increase is hence 1.05 ÷ 0.9 - 1= 16.6%. This figure can change depending on enemy base RES. If an enemy has 40 RES, for example, the damage increase is instead 0.8 ÷ 0.6 - 1 = 33.3%. If an enemy has - 20% RES, the damage increase is instead 1.2 ÷ 1.1 - 1 = 9.1%. Furthermore at 7:26, you over-hype Zhongli's meteor. Realistically speaking, if you build pure HP, using his Burst with its long animation time is a DPS loss. If you build offense, your shield becomes not too hard to break, which means losing out on aforementioned RES shred. The Petrification can be both a help and a hindrance, and while I admit it's mostly a help, it does ruin your efforts to move the enemies. 7:41 also overhypes the damage increase. It's not all that great (if you have 50k HP, that's only a 16.6k damage increase on the meteor even before damage reductions), though I'd definitely take the free damage.
The main reason I play him is, so I don't have to constantly be out of stamina from dodging the myriad of ground AoEs and enemy attacks. This allows me to actually use charge attacks for characters that can make use of them. If stamina were less of a problem (especially in combat), I'd use him less but for the time being he never leaves my party since he makes the game fun for me.
Little correction on corrosion, the 15% max hp threshold is only for non-active party members, so even active members can die. The shield being able to block the actual attack itself is still nice though
Corrosion is a cheap way to counter shields IMO. Because when you're hit, that's it your entire party has corrosion and you're forced to build healers. A better way to counterbalance shielders is to create mobs whose attacks can partially go through shield so players think twice about face tanking hits. I.e. the lawachurl elemental attacks, the ruin units' lasers and missiles, some bosses' atacks should partially go through shields.
As cheap as it was to have unavoidable damage, I liked the corrosion on death mechanics of 2.1 abyss 11. It made you approach fights in a different way and actually plan your kills and healing, forcing a very unique approach where you could try to nuke all at once to avoid most of the corrosion by ending the fight. Meanwhile currently corrosion beats shields on an enemy that is extremely erratic so face tanking them isn't even a good strat and would be awful to fight even without corrosion. Corrosion can work as a counter, but rifthounds do not.
The point of corrosion wasn't to make people not build shielders, it was made to force them to use healers. Sadly that's the only way to make them build healers without making all healers broken like Bennett
i think it's a good way to counter shields, actually. i like that stored party members take damage from it. we actually need more stuff that damages the entire party. next we need a curse effect that makes all party member share damage equally so you can't have a guy with 50k hp and three others with 9k. as long as we stray from the glass cannon meta, i'm all for it.
Corrosion is not the only attempt to counter shields, we had burning since the beginning of the game, but they are really pushing it in Inazuma. I guess that is what happens when you create a broken shield 🤷♂️ And we already have another mob that makes dmg ignoring shields, the dendro shaman hili, but I guess burning and any other status effects will come back with force with dendro. Right now burning is like non present in Inazuma and too weak in comparison. It's inevitable to have counter to shields trough status efects tbh, we had sings since the start, we had always have them. And with how strong Zhongli is if you introduce attacks that can partially ignore shields you will render useless the rest of the charas with shields. If you made the scale trough shield strength, you will have shields that let pass too much dmg bc the shields already have less hp than Zhongli's shield, the % of dmg that goes trough would be greater as the total number of shield strength is far less. If you decide to set the dmg to a fixed number the shield can be rendered useless when facing multiple enemies, a tactic that is used a lot in open world and abyss. Mmmm more like counter balance, it sounds like a way to make shields pointless in general 🤔 But I do like the idea of bosses that ignore dmg, I just can't think of a good way to balance it tho. Can you share some ideas? I do like the concept, how would you balance it? :D
I just got zhongli, and went from struggling with a lot of fights in world level 8, to never taking any damage from any enemies, dispite the fact that my zhongli is currently only level 40 with level 1 talents.
same here its awesome. I couldnt defeat a few quests and as soon as I got him I levelled what I could and then tried completing them. Needless to say I did them all first or second try woooo
Why I play him: he's my husbando 🥰🥰 He's honesty the reaspn why I caved and finally downloaded the game back in 1.1. Even if meta is moving away from shields because of corrosion, I will still use him in many future content. But as you have said, there hasnt been another character who challenges his spot, so he'll be in the top for a while
Zhongli was the first 5* I ever got and, because of that, I’ve never built a healer in the game. I have Bennett built but purely as an attack boost. The corrosion debuff nerfed me so bad 😭😭
I always have him on my team, because one of my problems with Xiao before I pulled Zl was getting backhanded by things in the middle of his ult. Now with Zl, I don't have to worry about that sort of thing, and it's an immense help.
I really loved your League why no one plays series and I just found out about your second channel and it brings so much of your League videos to Genshin. Loving the content.
Regarding characters overshadowing other characters: I think Mihoyo shouldn’t focus making weaker characters but rather characters who are different A - per say, a character that could do roughly the same amount of dmg as any other SS+ DPS but has different gameplay. That way you have an actual reason to pull for said character other then meta
Kazuha, Raiden and Ayaka are all SS+. The problem of very powerful characters becomes less important as the roster increases since they're not making weaker characters over time.
@@ADHDgoldfish What he said is essentially powercreep. Since Mihoyo keeps adding stronger and stronger characters to the roster over time (as a general rule, it's not always the case), characters who used to be strong at the time of their release eventually gets powercrept by newer, better characters released later. A great example of this is Diluc. He used to be a powerhouse when he first released - nowadays he's nothing special because better characters eventually overshadowed him.
I think that the game benefits from "gimmick" characters like Tartaglia and Hu Tao. Characters where you have to play a unique way are the characters that'll hard carry the game.
For his Story Quest is the best for me specially the salt god one. The ending of that quest gave me chills and feels at the same time. This is a great vid you my subscibe! Please do more
New video suggestions: -Why no one plays: Yoimiya, Yanfei, Xingyang, Sara, why no one plays Diluc anymore Which passive talent is the best Why everyone plays: I don`t know, there are actually plenty of such videos on youtube
why nobody plays xy anymore is pretty interesting in general, but also easily explained in one of the channel's earlier videos: New units constantly get better in most of the cases and nobody wants to play the old ones anymore or even deem standard 5-star characters as bad
@@withlovemays That is a good explanation for most unused characters, but Xinyan was dead on arrival. People immediately stopped using her. She was the first of her kind and didn't stand out.
@@priyanlevesque she has a niche use now at higher constellations as a support for eula, but yeah, she was never really an ideal support to begin with and as a main DPS shes also not as good as say a Ningguang or a razor.
I dont think ZhongLi is OP he is balanced, it is mostly when you prefer survivability over saving time via dmg and/or other benefits IMO, for example diona vs ZhongLi in a case of the lectors diona would be much better and in eula comps where cryo energy is much needed but in the cases where your characters do enough damage ZhongLi helps makes the content easier by giving more room for mistakes
@@DronesOverTheMoon Number 1 corruption is a thing and having a beefy shield doesnt mean its unbreakable and if u have seen the calcs his ult dmg goes down by alot to a point it is a dps loss if u build shiled solely so either u focus dmg wise or shield wise and then again majority of the healers can also solve other issues such as cleansing for jean cryo energy for diona TTDS for kokomi etc.
Lesser known tactic, you can use the pillars to block Magu Kenki's movements. At the beginning, if you have C1, place one pillar on each side and stand in front of it and it can't side step. You can place one behind you at the second phase and when he tries to teleport, it crash into the pillar so it doesn't travel far.
You missed one of his biggest features: mining. His stele dropping will smash a huge amount of crystal chunks or whatever. This makes farming super easy. I think the main thing that makes him OP is how short his CD is on skill. It means a massive shield up 100% of the time.
i actually think zhongli is at the perfect strength - taking away his resistance shred also removes half his benefits in xiao/geo teams, as his shield is the only way to reduce anemo and geo resistance in the game. his "immovable shield' is perfect for him, and i think the 20% res shred is the perfect offensive buff to the team. while i think his meteor does big damage, i also dont think its as crazy as you said it was. in burst form, itto's e skill can do as much damage as zhongli's burst - and zhongli doesn't do that as much damage if you build him for hp shield instead of atk. hes good, dont get me wrong, i hate playing without him and hes my favourite character + unit - but hes not overpowered. many top tier dps teams dont use him - national, morgana, taser, etc. however, hes still amazing.
I don't like using Zhongli as i do less dmg compared to Sucrose in my vape teams, but all the interrumping bs there is in the abyss forces me to. Comfort, ease to use and utility outweights dmg gain. I would gladly use dedicated healers like Barbruh and Qiqi if their E give interrumpion RES. You know, like Xingqiu's E or Beidou's Q.
@@atrollnottobetakenseriousl1147 I play on mobile mainly and honestly in my experience it is just as tough as dodging on pc. Unless you experience a lot of lag, that is, but the same goes for pc as well.
First of all, I like Zhongli, Zhongli is indeed a very interesting and strong character in terms of gameplay and characteristics. As my shielder, even at C0, he's already broken and I'm happy with that for my Hu Tao. It's also the reason why he's always on top tier of meta. HOWEVER, I disagree that when you compare him to Venti in terms of meta (not lore), it is not a fair comparison. Not because Venti is the weakest archon, but Venti is a cc unit in your team, with him in your team you have a better cc in the Abyss or any domains with crowd. Zhongli can provide shield and makes your team tankier, but he certainly CANNOT replace Venti and he cannot do what Venti can and vice versa. Note: For me, if I rate our John Lee (or Zhongli), he's 4.5/5, he's an amazing tank unit and burst support, but he's not 100% a forced-to-pull unit if you know how to build strong teams with only 4* characters to clear 36* Abyss, then he's not a big of a deal.
Zhongli is the main reason why I got into Genshin in the first place Even though I knew nothing about the game, I’d still watch the ads for the game because I thought the character designs were cool. But then the ad for Zhongli’s demo came up… oh boy, was I obsessed! He basically has some of my favorite character tropes: Calm and levelheaded, at least a little bit mysterious, intelligent but not a show off, and a total gentleman/woman/person with a kind soul but still kicks ass! Characters of those tropes are my bread and butter, and Zhongli is all of those! I watched a 4 hour video by Altered Maverick that explained most of the Genshin storyline that was out at the time just because I wanted to know more about Zhongli. That video got me excited about the game and now I’m a f2p mobile player! (Keep in mind, I’m not a big video game person, so to get me excited about a video game is quite the achievement.) My cousin also told me that there will be a rerun of him in the next update, so I’m saving up my primogems like a madman. There are lots of 4 and 5 star characters I want, but if I had to only pick one that I could get, I would easily choose Zhongli
They actually legally cannot nerf him since this is a character gacha. What they can do is diversify enemies and make healing a necessity, though. Perhaps even make some enemies that counter shields.
There's an enemy that gained a shield when it hit one and people started malding on reddit people claim to want the meta to change but don't want the enemies to change... so they just want everything to function exctly the same? that'd be boring af
@@eevee2Glacia I meant as in telling you that there'll be an enemy that counters shields The rest was moreso about people who complain about enemies countering certain stuff, which was a roundabout way of agreeing with you xP
@@proles8 OH FAIR ENOUGH I was genuinely confused by the response but yeah that is weird. Hopefully people will just be able to adapt swiftly, I know I'll be building my Bennett as soon as physically possible.
love his personality, voice(his English VA is amazing and did an amazing job voicing him - his Korean and Chinese voices are also superb, but the Englishone fits best) and he's a dragon. ofc his design is also pretty. he's so calm and would make anyone feel safe. the man is husband material(ofc I'm not going to ignore his less than stellar actions, but nobody is perfect). though honestly, by his appearance and the way he acts , if put in human years, I think zhongli is at best in his late twenties/early thirties(just my theory). I'm a casual player and I don't really play the game for abyss, but to relax. I don't care how weak he was originally, to me he is best. I am definitely going for his constellations.
These videos always hurt me lol, I HATE playing Zhongli and I LOVE playing Keqing, yet I can never find myself able to take Zhongli off my team or use Keqing for any of the more challenging parts of the game when I have Ayaka, Hu Tao, and Ganyu.
i hate meta characters and i only respect people who stray from them. keqing is actually viable, just invest enough in her and make a good comp. my friend clears every abyss with her as a main dps on one side and his keqing isn't even thaaaaaaaat stacked (he does have like almost all the 5 star swords tho) i've been phasing out bennet, xingqiu and xiangling whenever i can. they're strong, but they're boring and the community spoiled them to me with their incessant brown-nosing.
At least Zhongli makes Keqing a whole lot more viable imo. It’s really hard trying to get good damage output on the rifthounds with Keqing so every second counts
@@GraveUypo Give anyone money and they will start playing DPS Barbara. Over investing and claiming someone is good is so dumb. I love Keqing and so I'll pull Mistsplitter and Kazuha for her, but that doesn't change the fact that she is shit. Using same investment, I could pull Homa and Kazuha for Hu Tao and get way more returns than Keqing.
I used Keqing/Fischl/Xingqiu/Zhongli when PMA was on 12-3 And for this abyss Keqing/Fischl/Barbara/Kazuha since I needed more shield breaking She works fine, though I also have none of those three, since none of them appeal to me lol
The reason Zhongli can use the Jade Shield from ver.1.3 onwards to reduce nearby resistance is that the player denounces the official claim that he is a shield supporter, but puts this ability in c2. Erecting pillars and easily interfering with elemental reactions, and the damage of ordinary attacks is also low, so the official must let him provide other auxiliary effects in multiplayer mode at c0.
Spiral Abyss is definitely popular, even though I stopped at floor 7. I never once played Zhongli long enough and I have him in my roster from way back a year ago during his release. I leveled him up to 40 and I believe that was it and forgot I had him till I saw this video. I use Noelle as a geo user and have her at C6 which makes her a beast. I have her ready to handle a lot of defensive measures plus she's a battlemaid which is a huge plus factor.
And about his Burst, yes it has big % but due to the slow animation most people say using it is a dps loss most of the time and when you go full HP% the damage is almost non existant. While most you say is very true a few things feel exaggerated xD
The long animation offsets the fact that his damage is so good. There really isn't such a thing as DPS loss. Really if you are worried abt being at a "damage loss", you're already doing high enough damage to the point where most things don't live long anyway.
@@fish9347 In abyss every second can potentially count is all I mean with that. Regardless he is a must have imo for maximum comfort playing and open world. I crowned both skill und may exaggerated a bit, admittedly.
I love these kinds of analysis videos and I think it would be great to take a look into their actual character designs/their appearances. If that's something you think you could do then that'd definitely be awesome!
Honestly, Mihoyo screwed themselves when they buffed Zhongli so hard. They can't go back because the players will mald like never before and I think they are probably incredibly wary of buffing characters at all after they've been implemented now.
If you hold down Razor's E, it also instantly explodes nearby ores! He's my extremely low budget exploration Zhongli, but it's such a pain pulling him out because I don't use him otherwise
I feel like it’s because the character looks good great voice actor and decent utility for this game in particular. If every character was like that every character would be viable.
Not exactly everyone, more like early to mid game player. A lot of late game players move on to supports that can provide more damage since survival is really not that big of an issue.
@@eviez6205 To be completely honest, even xiao doesnt need zhongli in particular. Most xiao teams only have zhongli because there is literally no one else that you can pair with him.
everyone still literally thinks you need him to complete abyss 100% of the time because of how much people say he's good, when people only either want him because they want to play braindead and not dodge, or use Zhongli in actual comps like Melt Ganyu/Hu Tao since they're the ones who actually need him to maximize their damage lol
I agree with this cause dps char like ganyu, hutao and xiao really need a shield character like Zhongli because how squishy they are tho I mean childe weekly boss can one shot xiao just because how squishy xiao become when he use his Q
I would say Zhongli’s viability is misunderstood and I would like to clarify with some of the points you made and why I do not agree. Zhongli is mostly good because he can make Ganyu, Xiao, Hu Tao, and Eula better. Without those four top meta defining characters demanding a good shield, Zhongli would not be as good as he is. Zhongli’s damage is still very lackluster. His AoE is small on his skill and is still a 5050 on whether you generate geo particles. His burst, while beeg number, is actually not as much DPS as you may think. It is one of the longest bursts to cast, a total of 3 seconds. In that time, your Hu Tao, your Ganyu, and your Xiao could do much more damage. You use the petrify to survive or you use it to hold them in place for some reason but it has no grouping ability so gl with RNG. His shield will not increase every DPS’s damage. Your Xiangling international team will not get better with Zhongli, it will get better with Kazuha, Childe, or Raiden. Because we currently have many main top Main DPSes that can improve because of the survivability, Zhongli shield is valuable. This is especially seen for Eula and Xiao, Eula has low poise values unlike Diluc, meaning she cannot interrupt certain enemies from doing their attacks like samurai and the rifthounds. That design then creates demand for a Zhongli or Diona. On the other hand, Xiao and Zhongli do not have some sort of strong synergy like Xiangling and Bennett or Ganyu with Venti. But what Zhongli does for xiao is provide one of the few forms of anemo resistance shred and fix Xiao’s frailness. While you can dodge attacks with jump, you can’t dodge during your plunge. It’s just character design demanding certain supports to fix their problems that is what makes Zhongli good. Zhongli is not good because he is Geo either, I know this wasn’t a point but I want to say that, not mentioning that crystallize shields (or any other shield for that matter) do not stack on top of each other can be misleading to some players who are unaware. A crystallize shield takes the same damage as Zhongli shield, meaning it does not increase the HP of the shields you have. They would both break simultaneously if they had the same amount of HP rendering crystallize shields to be very useless with Zhongli.
I should also clarify for the Zhongli meatball burst point. A F2P Zhongli with good investment and favonius lance (pretending we are trying to maximize his damage) can do at best, 40k damage at lvl 8 burst. In that same three seconds, blackcliff xiao could do nearly 80k dmg with sucrose ttds buff and zhongli shield and much much more if we account for the 5 seconds it takes to regularly switch and set up xiao again. I use xiao as the example because that is a popular team Zhongli finds himself in and we should compare the amount of time you spend on the team’s rotation. Also, Xiao and Zhongli burst have around the same AoE so I thought that would be a more fair comparison.
I feel that the major factor why people overrate him is that he has a high use rate but in actuality, he is never the best in slot in any team other than xiao geo and mono geo. That might even change if mihoyo releases a specialized support made for xiao like what they are doing with sara, thoma and gorou.
@@utaku434 That’s a great point and I think you’re correct. For anybody reading our comments, just know that Zhongli is a good character but not everything about him is good. “Big meatball number” might not be worth the three seconds for example. There may be a better character worth using more, but Zhongli is a safe choice.
Can someone pass me the copium? *snorts 🥲👍 i pulled him for his character personality.. back then, i only played genshin for the story and never knew abyss existed or knew how it works. Lol
@@utaku434 Tbh, a flexible character that's 2nd - 4th best in a lot of places is better than somone who's #1 but falls off heavily out of their element
unrelated to Zhongli, but i wish hoyo would release a geo character that actually ulitilizes the crystallize shields. imagine a character that depending on which element is crystallized it gives different buffs to the party/active character: pyro gives atk%, hydro gives max hp, cryo gives crit rate or immunity to cryo effects (frozen and slow) , and electro gives ER or flat energy generation
if im being honest. i want to see a healer that, when healer heals, they give a status that just makes the current character unflinching. to balance this out there would be a healing threshhold here the character can heal, but not give the unflinching status. i think this is balanced enough and to make it to a similar power level to zhongli we can just make the corresion status not capped to only deal damage to 15% but to death and i think it creates a choice; do i want healing and unflinching, or do i want resistance shred and unflinching. and the f2p that cant get either of these characters doesnt matter because either way, theyre using healers
@@evotheevolutions Not when your Itto stacks def or you have damage reduction Or it serves as stagger interruption Plus it's especially good against elemental monsters like the oceanids
The answer is pretty obvious:
- Greatest demo
- Greatest voice
- Greatest shields
- Osmanthus Wine tastes the same as he remembers
+ Have two amazing character quests.
+ Fluid and elegant fight animation.
+ Great character design.
+ Audiobook / ASMR voice.
BUT WHERE ARE THOSE WHO SHARE THE MEMORY?!
and he will have order!
+ THIS! IS ORDER!
But we don’t know where are those who share the memory
I don't think there's a single burst animation more satisfying in the entire game. The arm cross, the sky being all apocalyptic, and that big ol meteor.
i get chills everytime i use zhongli's burst and then follow it with raiden's mosou shinsetsu
i built him as a burst sub dps so, watching his burst deals over 100k is hella fun sometimes lol
Zhongli burst has best animation followed by Diluc( even though he is not that good anymore his burst animation still slaps)
Not to mention the sound of the meteor when it hits, try using the Burst without Music it really sounds impactful and satisfying.
i like eula burst
Zhongli's shield removes the need for healing. And then ironically, the guy becomes a healer, and he gets to C6
the more reason for not needing a healer character
cant heal your bank account tho
@@iamanimmaturechildonyoutub1110 He deals critical damage to wallets for sure
Corrosion exists and you can die from it on field. You could also just learn how to dodge better. Sometimes it would be better to have another support to buff your team? Of course it depends on the team comp though too, geo resonance can be good. I don't own Zhongli, I've played friends' abyss with their Zhonglis and frankly it just takes up extra time to place the shield when you could be dealing damage. I'm probably alone on this opinion though.
@@pechumie nah you’re def not alone, even a lot of the recent “meta” team comps haven’t been utilizing Zhongli since he becomes way less useful the more skilled you are at the game. once you learn enemy attack patterns you can just dodge, he doesn’t add any substantial damage to your rotations so you’re wasting time with him on the team instead of slotting in a different support, and with res shred becoming more common among new characters, the 20% on his shield becomes less valuable. even geo res has it’s problems - most geo characters suffer from the same issues as zhongli, where their utility doesn’t outweigh the damage deficit from slotting them into the team, and having multiple geo constructs can mess up reactions through crystalize. for early game and comfort runs, Zhongli is unparalleled, but in late game content he becomes less useful, which is counterintuitive to a shielder but it makes sense as recent abysses have just been giant dps checks
8:40. It actual does have combat application because the hold skill doesn’t just destroy ore it drains Geo from surrounding targets so you can instantly break hillichurl rock shields, fatui geo shields and deal massive damage to Lawachurl geo shields
don't need a zhong li advertisement for a mid af character
@@rittenhouse5792 are u high
And for everyone else, it drops physical defence. Add superconduct to that and a claymore swing will cripple whoever gets in the way
@@rittenhouse5792 what you smokin’
@@chreese37 I think he's talking about the enemies. They are super weak anyway you don't need zhong li just for that. That's probably why no one talks about the sheild charge. It is cool to know tho, I'll keep it in mind for when I get him 😄.
The meta might be pulling away from shields with corrosion debuffs. But i think he will always have a place in top tier.
Many boss' have been given indirect ways of lowering hp. signora heat and sheer cold, azhdaha elemental damage on shielded units, wolfhound boss corrosion, etc.
Dunno, my geo Tao feel just fine on the current 12-3 with no healers. Corrosion is overrated imo.
@@Soundwave1900 Agreed, i just bring in Jean just in case but usually the corrosion does like 1/9 of my health, and the shield still provides unlimited interrupt resist, protection from every other non corrosion damage source and the res shred, the only way they nerf shields is doing an enemy/ boss that just flat out removes shields on attack but that would piss of the community so much
It would be as simple as floor 11 with the ley line disorder of: "all shield strength is reduced by 60%". That would make it significantly harder and force people (including me) to actually think about dodging again instead of just hold E and tank everything
@@Soundwave1900 Agreed, i use eula fischl albedo and zhongli on abyss 12, no problem at all
the active character can actually die to corrosion , the ones whose hp stops depleting at 15% are the other party members @4:40
yeah this guy doesnt know what hes talking about lol
@@lucasbinder6151 yea, that little mistake nullifies his whole facts filled video
@@lucasbinder6151 yep most of his videos have flaws in logic and a lot of personal biases. but he's just a guy, you can't expect him to be an all-knowing god and you should require it from him. he's giving his two cents. i disagree with a whole load of stuff he says.
but then again, i have always strayed from the meta in every game ever. meta is usually shallow and pretty stupid, that's something i cannot overlook, specially in pvp games, where people are so glued to meta that they don't know what to do when you do something different that's unexpectedly powerful. unfortunately, this game doesn't have pvp, so i can't punish people for being too meta, but that's okay i guess.
@@raul3363 He thinks venti is not OP. That also proves something.
@@raul3363 Is that supposed to be sarcastic?
I’m a casual player and play this game to relax. I don’t want to cancel animations or dodge at all. So, for me the greatness of Zhongli is pretty self-evident. Since I pulled him he never left my party.
You are not alone with this type of thinking! I also play this game just to relax. Besides the character animations in this game overall are really nice. But, even though I have him, and use him a lot, very often I leave him at the tea house in Liyue as Genshin Impact mobs for the most part are really stupid and it really isn't hard to dodge them.
Same hes always in the team
I'm kind of scared to roll for him because I don't want to remove what little challenge exists in the game
@@gilroyscopa as a person who got stuck in the archon quests regularly because this game was too challenging, I don’t know what to recommend. I suppose you can just not use his shield and tap E instead of holding it.
Noelle Works as a Budhet Zhongli with good healing whwn you focus completely on Def as well.
The greatest character for all kinds of player types. Especially on mobile he's essential for stress free playing as the controls is sluggish.
Yeah I first started playing on a potato phone and let's just say zhongli helps out a lot when the game lag
Thank God i play on PC. I assume mobile takes half of the fun away from combat with the limited controls.
@@artemis1993 As a mobile player, it’s still very easy to enjoy the game. I don’t have much issue with the controls, but now characters are super hard to play, let alone have fun with. Still, when lag kicks in it’s good to have a shield to block any dmg I could be taking without knowing.
@@artemis1993 I'm a mobile player and sometimes my controls just give up on me and do whatever they want. When I try to move my character in a certain direction they walk in the opposite direction or don't move at all, most of the time the game even lags which leads to me taking heavy damage. Now that I got Zhongli I hope playing will be a little easier
@@artemis1993 I play with controller on iPhone 13 pro max. I can’t play the game without controller. I can’t 36 star with touch controls. It is horrendous
I just love the fact that he's voiced by Keith Silverstein the man and legend who (apart from having a godly voice) also voices Shen from League - another tank who protects their teammates (well, not in my rankeds tho). It just makes me happy idk
WAIT HE'S VOICED BY TORB FROM OVERWATCH 😭
He also wonders if you've been to the cloud district in Skyrim
As well as char in gundam the origin and full frontal in gundam unicorn
Also voices hagoromo otsosuki
Oh wtf?! He voiced Shen?!
Having Zhongli is SO NICE when you have new/neglected characters you want to use before being leveled out or can take on usually 1 higher domain than recommended for your team. I think he helps me get more versatility for my other 3 slots so I can be more experimental
I've been on max world level with no character over 80/80 and no zhongli, and I handle level 90 domains fine in sub-1-minute (without food for most domains), and have 36-starred some abysses. He's good but don't underestimate the free version (Noelle) or the multitude of overpowered 4*s (like xiangling and ningguang, my main dpses in abyss).
@@vitriolicAmaranth I'm not saying you need Zhongli, just that if you have an underdeveloped characters you are mid build he is really nice, or when I was much lower level I could do the higher domains
@@vitriolicAmaranth Ok Mr. Triehard
@@Barni2212 The 80/80 thing isn't really tryhard, it's more laziness than anything. My main DPSes are Ning and Ayaka and I hate both of their ascension bosses so I've avoided their final ascension, I don't use any meta supports and Noelle does just fine at 80/80 with a nearly unbreakable shield. Xiangling is an absolutely broken sub DPS, so much so that even at 80/80 with crescent pike she's singlehandedly carried my second stringers to 36* some abysses. As good as the national team is, I think some people still underestimate how much of that is just xiangling.
@@BreMue My point is more that the benefits he provides can be had from some 4*s and even free characters. Maybe not all in one package, but people overlook Noelle a lot.
Just wish we got the KFC Noelle skin. Don't like her default outfit.
I don’t think he needs to be nerfed at all. He’s the epitome of unga bunga. You put up his shield and you don’t have to think about mechanics for the next 20 seconds. He’s perfect for people who play the game to relax and just like seeing their characters do attacks. He’s really strong for most players, but he actually falls out a bit with whales, as for speedrunning he isn’t very good, as the resistance shred isn’t competitive with other supports in terms of damage. He covers most content in the game, but has a few niches where he’s not great, and for maximised damage he’s not one of the best supports for most teams. He works really well as an op but not omnipotent character who does his role as an archon justice.
also note that a "meta" exists because we're scarce in resources. if everyone was able to build every character in, say, a few days to a week of investment, everyone would be "good" or at least ok. but because not all of us can resin refresh or get the best weapon, the most optimal way to play would be to use characters that can make do with little and still return a lot of value.
due to being a 5* char, they will usually have higher stats and better/more synergistic ascension stats, and they need this difference to justify their 5* price. thus making them easier to build and a great choice for most teams
exactly. i'm dying to stop farming for childe but it's been months since i got him and i only have half assed artifacts on him. just yesterday i got albedo so now i have to start farming for him (cause i didnt get to prefarm. thanks, childe). that's all on top of talents and boss mats which all require resin and rng (also i dont think resin is bad, just the layers on layers of rng makes it feel like youre wasting it every time you use it).
so of course we want to build the best characters. there's a considerable amt of timed content that exists outside of abyss and half assed units are probably not going to make it in time so if we're gonna use a half assed unit at least let them be a good one, right?
also the layers of rng goes like this when farming artifacts.
you have to get the right set, then the right piece, then the right main stat, then the amount of substats (3-4), if it had 3 then you have to get the right 4th stat, then once you have 4 you have to get the right substat levelled, then hope the next substat that's levelled is also right, then the next and next, until the artifact is lvl 20. oh and for every time the substat gets levelled theres rng for how much it increases too. that means you can have 2 artifacts that only rolled into the crit dmg substat but chances are they arent the same number. another reason is because the number each substat starts with is also rng.
luckily artifact farming i think is the only thing that layered but the fact that it's the main part of your character's dmg which is the one thing you'll constantly be increasing makes it such a gruelling experience esp when you have multiple characters you want to build.
@@renoirrr couldn’t agree more! Unless you can afford resin refresh daily or are super lucky, it’s almost impossible to build your newly obtained 5star b4 new banner drops. The only method to counter this I can think of is pre-farming, but then again you’d have to have no use for resins to be able to pre-farm. This game is just a never-ending hell of grinding and gambling lmao
@@renoirrr As a note, when you're still building up characters, it's best to not try to perfect everyone right away
You'll get more damage from a synergistic average team (2 pc elemental, 2 pc atk with just the right main stats, or 4 pc if you get lucky) than going for perfection right away and letting everyone else rot (even with albedo, I'd say to go for just 2 pc archaic 2 pc husk unless you run out of stuff to do)
Build on low rolls and slowly pass +20 artifacts down do other characters or save them instead of instantly foddering them, and it'll help a lot in the long run. Artifacts may be rng but genshin is one of the few games where equipment isn't class 'locked', and you can swap gear around infinitely without needing to pay to unequip them
Paimon.moe is a good site to use for builds as well, if you go with build based on what drops instead of aiming for something specific, stuff gets way faster
I'd also heavily recommend building supports and off field DPS overall, they offer so much team versatility that a main DPS wouldn't lock you into, it's just that main dps often 'come online' easier
To be fair, if this was a gacha game with infinite resources, the game would be balanced around a higher powerlevel, so you'd have a straight forward grind, but then you'd also *have* to grind
I was a day 1 zhongli believer. Between Keith Silverstein's immaculate voice acting, his fantastic kit and his beautiful and tragic lore I couldn't help but make him my main.
250$ pickaxe and was so bad you lost damage by using him at all with a shield not big enough to tank things vs diona's shield of similar size with her cryo 250% in the first abyss.
good times.
shame vars is sugar coating it so much with playing a whale account and so little game knowledge he actually thinks zhongli needs a nerf. crazy how spending thousands of dollars on a game F2P can clear and get max rewards makes you think the game is too easy.
@@richardjones8846 I mean i spent 0 and got him. And it didn't matter whether he was good or bad. I liked him, he was a comfortable character to use. Plus i wont lie Diona skeevs me out, if you like her good on ya but I don't feel ok using a literal child.
It too easy. You can easily 36 star abyss with only 4* unit and 4* weapon .... if I remember correctly jinjinx 36 star abyss with 4 4*unit with 4*weapon last month.
Yeah I mained him too. Everyone is like "vortex vanquisher sux bro" and I went and got it anyway because when I find myself in a tough jam, or want to get the higher difficulty rewards, having him solo is beneficial.
Playing for shield: ❌
Playing the comfort of petrification and burst damage: ✅
fun facts: talent 13 zhongli burst does 1084% damage, on 5 units this is 5420%
ganyu's burst at talent 13 does 5,973% per enemy on and up to 5 for a total of 29,866%
beidou's on 2 targets is over 14,000%
but yknow.... zhongli's burst is one of the highest vars has seen.
@@richardjones8846 yep, Childe’s burst scaling is up there as well. (Though not as high, can do serious damage)
@@maraisfan4life517 the scaling isnt as high but purely due to the fact that vaporize exists , his scaling can do a lot more damage
@@asi3136that’s what I said lol
Rather than do guaranteed corrosion damage, I'd rather see some enemies have "shield-breaker" type moves that are designed to do extra damage to shields, but not so much to HP.
Mihoyo,, this one good idea for Dendro XD Vegetables do 'eating' the earth... and the counter would be over-grown that makes dendro do more damage or something by applying dendro to geo.. XD
corrosion is just a current mechanic, enemies that do extra damage to shields are the geo abyss mages which aren't out yet.
@@richardjones8846 anemo abyss mage isn't out yet either 👀
@@richardjones8846 geo abyss mage shield is just a rock
Make me think about who to bring, which adds more strategy and gameplay. You could easily have one of the two paths of the abyss contain more of such enemies which rewards player choice
can we just appreciate how hes pronouncing every characters name especially in liyue, correct, or at least close to correct
even with keqing
Yet he does Ganyu wrong and it urks me
@@iluvchess14736 uhhh, im Chinese and he pronounces it pretty well (if you ignore the four 声) in the ganyu vid. Idk if he pronounces it well here though, too lazy to scroll through the vid looking for him to say ganyu lol
His pronunciation sounds native to me
i honestly don't like that pronounciation, i find it annoying
@@durag9810 so u dont like the proper pronunciation of the names…
I agree with the overshadowing.
I was hoping that a well-built Thoma could replace Zhongli for my Hu Tao Team, but Zs shields are bigger, have more uptime, are easier to manage, reduce enemy defense... So in the end Thoma just felt bad in comparison.
Thoma is theoretically stronger, if you can deal with your shields being smaller
I completely agree that Zhongli's shield is just so much better than Thoma's which feels pretty bad, but the main appeal of Thoma is that he can also apply pyro which can then be swirled with an anemo character. So while his shield is obviously not as good, Thoma actually allows Hu Tao do do more damage which I think somewhat makes up for it
@@Akai93 Yeah, thats a fair point!
I think the difference would be as noticeable if Thomas Burst had not an 80 energy cost. Maybe like 60 or so.
@@knicklichtjedi that's where his c4 comes into play
@@Akai93 laughs with c4 yenfie with thrilling tales for the buffs
I’ve loved him from day one. His aesthetic, his playstyle and the fact it was a unique element (fire burns, water is wet but geo was a new concept) all added to it. But for me, I main my dps Zhongli and triple crown him because I just had so much fun with him. He’s a character that has been perfectly created - his kit, his backstory, his arc - all of it has been so well done. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who says they don’t like zhongli. I’ve met people who think the shield is too strong but they still really like the character. And on top of all that, he can pretty much fit into any comp and still provide a benefit.
I hate zhong li
@@rittenhouse5792 Thanks for sharing with the class, you're a real ray of sunshine.
@@rittenhouse5792 ok edgelord. You’re not like other girls right?
@@rittenhouse5792 Sounds like you said that just to be a contrarian
He was my first 5 star, got him one year ago, he's my favourite character and that's the reason I need to play as him
Pfp checks out :)
he is also my first 5 star character got I'm a week ago
8:33 In fact, there is another character that can collect ores just as easily, though in a smaller AoE, and that's Razor with his hold E!
i was checking to see if anyone else commented this! thank you!
Indeed, as an ex Razor main I can confirm (farming for artifacts 'cause I miss playing with him)
also, this isn't standalone and so a bit situational
Beidou if you light gras on fire, really big AoE of ore breaking. Made my cor lapis farming way less painful
Spamming that huge rock with mono geo will never not be satisfying. I agree with most of the video, except the res shred removal. You won't ever hear me complain about extra damage when the abyss difficulty keeps going up.
zhongli is the only source outside of geo resonance for geo shred. he doesn't understand the game's mechanics enough but has the audacity to suggest something as stupid as removing the resistance shred from zhongli's shield.
half the mechanics he tries to explain are not how they work and skips most of the reasons other units are ACTUALLY overpowered.
he has a hu tao with a homa and ganyu with amos... obviously the game is going to be easy for him when the game is designed for the average player; this is why the game's difficulty is slowly going up over time since power is gained over time and not how a vocal minority of players complain about "game is for whales" when they're trying to 36 star abyss with their nonsense teams.
then you've got the flip side here of "game too easy" when he's clearly whaled the shit out of his account. he dead ass said the game isn't F2P friendly when half the meta teams are majority and sometimes all 4 star units that don't need constellations, some even use 4 stars weapons as best in slot.
@@richardjones8846 Zhongli is the only way for physical to get -60% against ruin enemies as well, Zhongli without res shred would only have uptime to overtake noelle, but at that point you could just use albedo for constant crystallize
when i got zhongli when I started the game, I just breezed through everything without a sweat. But when I started doing the spiral abyss and had to make a team without zhongli, I wasn't expecting it to be this hard for people without zhongli
I love that you brought the style point.
Everyone argues he's just, "Ignore the game mechanics" button.
Yes he is.
BUT LOOK AT THIS MAN. WHERE DO YOU GET THIS CLASS AND ATTITUDE?
Zhongli is the only character to this day that can resonate with other characters' skills. His ability to make other other characters structures do more than they already do is insane and he is the only one who can do this
Unfortunately the game is so unfriendly towards geo constructs.
microwave team is a meme and needs a lot of investment to work on units that can't break constructs.
mihoyo knows that geo constructs are a failed design and why you've not seen another one since albedo.
cap at 3 and bosses look at them they despawn, try to spawn them inside a large enemy or another one that's down they despawned instead of just to the side and ignore enemy collision so characters like albedo aren't actually useless against bosses.
@@giulia1361 true, tho I have to admit, using Geo Traveler + sub dps Zhongli whenever you have to defend the monolith in the abyss is kinda fun lol nothing can touch it and god have mercy on them if they try to get in
But have you noticed they haven't released new geo construct summoners since Zhongli? Not sure if itto's cow even counts.
@@vitriolicAmaranth Itto's cow counts as a construct. The only ones that arent are Gorou and Noelle.
Geo as a whole could be way more balanced if Zhongli wasn’t the only character who could petrify imo
That’s what makes him unique.
Yeah, some more trapping mechanics for geo would be great- maybe not fully petrified, but slowed movements would be nice as an effect.
Character that punches the ground and makes it like a, ummm, "quick sand"ish. Enemy movement becomes slower in it.
Ps: idk if quick sand is the right word. What I have in mind is the sand that pulls you in the more you move.
@@realrahzz quicksand
@@maraisfan4life517 petrify is just a weaker version of frozen status lol
"unique" my as$
I was playing through the archon quests 2 weeks ago and Zhongli is definitely the best developed 5 star character story. You learn about the Salt god and earth dragon his involvement with them. How he built Liyue. its all great. Then you do Childe's story and its just baby sitting his brother for most of it.
wait for when part 3 of zhongli story quest comes out and you get to learn about guizhong and rex lapis
Zhongli is actually insane in the buffing department too. I've seen others' Geo Travelers do the same damage as my crowned one with higher crit dmg, simply because I don't have Zhongli. Same goes for my Albedo.
The 20% less damage resistance it´s acumulative with the Geo resonance, so, that's why. So dmm strong.
It's the Geo resonance but the 20% resistance helps a bit as well.
As a Zhongli main, I appreciate this video, thanks man, oh and the fact that the Pokémon Explorers of Sky Temporal Tower theme is playing in the background makes all the more perfect 👌
Love ur videos. Ur way of explaining things is really good and it shows that u care about the game and care about the characters when u make videos for genshin. So thank u for all the hardwork u do.
Thank you
MAN they should have given this to kokomi. Like she inspires her troops and fills them with confidence. So naturally they would be less likely to flinch. What a smart idea on your part… and a missed opportunity
His pillar, helps with all around exploration too! Even if sometimes it gets a bit glitched into walls, and ledges haha
Venti is a… “Serviceable” character? I think that may be a bit of an understatement.
Venti’s burst is better CC than Planet Befall in the vast majority of cases, with much better MV/s.
as well as how cracked VV is and triple em swirl aoe
Nope it isn't they just both have their own CCs that's better in either situations. Saying venti has a better CC isn't true either when Zhongli can petrify through shields and even bigger enemies when venti can't gather these enemies which plague higher floors of abyss and harder content.
vars doesn't know enough about genshin impact because he whaled on an account and thinks the game is too easy while actually saying "not F2P friendly" while the game is literally designed for F2P.
i may have been a little eccentric when commenting on his keqing video but tried to point out all the things he was mistakenly presenting as facts.
such as JUST on this video a 20% res shred on zhongli's shield is not a 25% damage increase.... ever.
he knows nothing about elemental gauge theory, thinks corrosion can't kill you, and kokomi is a bad unit despite being used in one of the strongest meta teams to date that doesn't even use bennet or xingqiu.
he dead ass has the audacity to say zhongli should be nerfed while saying "he has a 7-10k shield" when it's actually over 30k at talent 10 and 50k hp , not even taking into consideration teams that use beidou for a 39% DR
@@richardjones8846
not F2P friendly does NOT mean it's not easy. The game IS easy, if you put the time into it. Whales just have an easier time with it because they can get any character they want + they basically have infinite resin, while F2P players need to save for their fav characters and cant really afford using their primos for resin.
a 20% shred is not a 25% damage boost yeah but it's really not that big of a deal to get upset over, it's still a damage boost all the same. elemental gauge theory is not important and never called kokomi bad. You literally have this boner for hating on him for no reason
@@richardjones8846 i feel like there’s a distinct line between casual, meta, and theorycrafter. vars is in the meta side i guess
As a f2p I feel naked and vulnerable without zhongli in my team. He’s spot one and always will be for me
Him and kazuha
7:21 A small correction here, that's not how damage resistance shred works.
First of all, resistance shred beyond 0% is halved and enemy with common resistances (10%) under effect of ZL shield would have -5% resistance, which results in ~17% dmg increase (VV in the same conditions provides around 27% increase). And it's the best case scenario (technically 20% would be better, but i can't remember enemies with 20% res from the top of my head) i.e. you have no other ways to shred res and enemy has pretty low res. Against enemies with high res his shred is too weak and if you're able to shred enemy res below 0% already (by using superconduct, VV, geo resonance etc.) his shred gives less then 10% dmg increase.
So overall it's a nice bonus, but the only time when it's really impactful is when you need to shred anemo resistance for anemo carry, because it's the only way to increase anemo dmg and the only other way to shred anemo res iirc is Jean C4...and it's Jean C4, duh, good luck with this one.
Iirc doesn't anemo traveller provide anemo res shred from their c6?
isn’t your damage increase more noticeable against high res enemies? eg: zhongli shred on azhdaha (70% geo res) and then doing geo attacks
@@astra0225 yeah they do
@@astra0225 Oh, right. Anemo traveler exists.
@@chchen0725 It is, but increase from dealing 50% of your dmg to 70% not worth it over just using element that enemy already has low resistance to.
My biggest and only regret in my Genshin history was pulling on standard while Zhongli had his banner...
I joined at the end of 1.4 because of Childe and I also liked Zhongli. I didn't know if he was good and at the time all i knew about genshin's combat was that it is about elemental reactions and geo can't do any aka it felt useless to me. Childe and Keqing were my two faves at the time and I did all my early game pulls on standard all the way until 2 weeks before kazuha dropped. I got 2 monas and a wolfs gravestone, thinks I don't use til this day.
Now with Albedo and Keqing coming home I have every single 5-star I wanted - except for Zhongli. :')
There were rumors about 2.4 having xiao, ganyu AND zhongli, but then the rumors about him died down real quickly. I have no shield character in the game except for thoma who helps out a little, I have no healer except for bennett and the bit xingqui does, so i've become perfect at dodging - but I do hope he will get a second rerun.
I get that the archons are a bit more powerful and it would be almost dumb if they weren't, but Zhongli feels so much more OP compared to Raiden who I have and have build
Zhongli and Raiden are both op in different ways.
Zhongli- petrification and shield
Raiden: universal battery for everyone
I plan on saving and pulling for all the archons first before getting anyone else. All the other characters I've got are from regular banner and Childe back when I was newbie and didn't know what I was doing so I wasted all 10K+ of my newbie primos.
Hey bud, you got another chance coming up
@@ILOV3BUTT3R yes! i saw it yesterday and when the banner drops i'll have enough wishes for 90 pity . just gotta win 50/50 or get early!
@@withlovemays did u get him? i hope u did!!!
I remember when Raiden came out people were like "Omg she's so weak." But like, she's not. I think they realized they went too hard on Zhongli and so they made Raiden busted as hell, but incredibly focused, like she is in the lore. Raiden is almost exclusively focused on the pursuit of eternity and eating Dango, so having her kit also be incredibly focused and energy generation and burst damage makes perfect sense.
Nah C0 raiden is not busted, she is viable but not broken(unlike venti ganyu zhongli kazuya these units are absolutely broken at c0 even with F2P weapons), however after c2 she clearly becomes one of the best units in game even without engulfing lightening.
Almost no one sensible said she was weak at C0. What most people said was she was underwhelming when compared to other archons like Zhongli (broken shielding) and Venti (broken CC) at C0 and is locked behind cons like Eula which still is true. She is absolutely great for non-meta players but as one starts playing efficiently her value starts to decline.
raiden c0 > zhongli c0
Only reason why Raiden is so popular is because her C1 + C2 is broken and lots of people pulled her C2. If her C2 was in C4 or C6 position, you wouldn't see that much praise to her as you see right now.
Lots of outdated info and bad takes here in the replies huh. The Raiden circlejerk really altered people's thoughts about her.
I think you covered perfectly how “annoyingly” good our rock dad is. As much as I believe he needs a nerf for gameplay purposes (and definitely not because I don’t have him), I don’t want him to get nerfed. That would only remove his specialty. I feel Mihoyo should design a “diet” form of Zhongdong in a 4 star variant. Preferably in the small body for the hilarity factor.
Xenoblade Chronicles Collab, add a nopon, everyone's favorite small- body tank unit
based on china law, anything that was buffed or never buffed is not allowed to get a nerf. mihoyo could be sued by the government that way
Why on earth would you want good characters to get nerfed?? I would absolutely HATE that.
@@changjueren7 that is the best law they could have come up with
Isn't diona basically diet zhongli in a small body? except without the nuke and she can heal lol
Zhongli is fine
he may have a loaded kit and comfy to use but in terms of power level he usually isnt a BiS member in a team because Anemo unit exist (unless its a hu tao team or Double geo centric or mobile gaming).
mihoyo did a great job balancing him.
his defense is strong and but his offensive capabilities is low, the pillar does more harm than good (fucking up camera, stealing reaction, disturb combat, unrealiable energy) and the meteor does low damage unless u have a good ratio on him which takes a lot of investment to balance shield + meteor + ER for meteor.
hence why most player just build him as shield bot which mean he does negligible damage on a team.
his utility is amazing but he aint gonna singlehandedly carry your team. if ur team lack damage he aint gonna boost it by alot, he is there to smooth out ur run.
constellation wise, his C2 is a huge QoL that fix a lot of his problem mainly his shield cast time that has long animation (especially if u are affected by cryo) and its justify to build ER on him. if anyone wanna go for const this is the best to get.
Wow~ You may be the first content creator I've seen to consistently pronounce Zhongli and half of the Liyue characters names properly~!! (Aside from all those pronunciation guide videos, but they don't really count, haha.) Kudos for that~!
Regarding a possible debuff, I wouldn't mind Zhongli's Dominus Lapidus being nerfed, provided that his auto attack regains the geo element on certain hits in the combo.
ZZZAAAWWWWNNNGGGGLLLLEEEEEE
Regarding Genshin Character design, I think Mihoyo is already catching on to characters being too versatile and flexible with characters like Bennett and Xingqiu, by creating characters Kujou Sara and Gorou, while right now they may not have much place as supports, when characters like Itto, Yae Miko, and Scaramouche come out assuming they are all DPS, their value and roles will expand with more characters coming out and specialist supports like them will be much more valuable long term
I agree with mostly of what you said. Only thing is the Scaramouche hopium. Don't get your hopes up too much, or else they'll kill him next time he's on screen. But of course, dead characters can also be playable.
@@FrenchDinosaur Sacaramouche is mentioned by Shogun in her voicelines as Kunikuzushi, while he isn't in Childe's, so maybe that means mihoyo decided to make him playable (only playable characters are mentioned by others)
@@FrenchDinosaur i agree lol. scaramouche has a low chance of being playable due to clipping issues with his hat (ha). also since he was teased so long ago (like signora) and hasnt had any official mention of being playable yet, makes me think its unlikely he'll be playable
@@ocurimi ?? not true ?? a lot of characters mention varka, skirk, tsaritsa and we've had no indication of whether they are playable or not, let alone even being released
@@lostsouldown tsaritsa will definetly be playable as all the archons are. if not then we'll be in for another anniversary sized disaster.
He has a phenomenal voice actor. Love Zhongli lore. He's been my favorite character in the story. For gameplay I like using him in a Eula, Raiden, Zhongli, Qiqi comp.
Geo daddys voice in eng. Version is amazing, the recent itto 5 star is the only voice that comes close to its awesomeness, however ittos voice is obviously a totally different personality, but seriously the dude nailed it, itto is hilarious
7:14 You made a mistake here. Most enemies have base 10% Resistance. This means damage they take is multiplied by 0.9. If you take away 20% RES, they're left with - 10%. However, negative figures are halved, so damage they take is multiplied by 1.05. The damage increase is hence 1.05 ÷ 0.9 - 1= 16.6%.
This figure can change depending on enemy base RES. If an enemy has 40 RES, for example, the damage increase is instead 0.8 ÷ 0.6 - 1 = 33.3%. If an enemy has - 20% RES, the damage increase is instead 1.2 ÷ 1.1 - 1 = 9.1%.
Furthermore at 7:26, you over-hype Zhongli's meteor. Realistically speaking, if you build pure HP, using his Burst with its long animation time is a DPS loss. If you build offense, your shield becomes not too hard to break, which means losing out on aforementioned RES shred. The Petrification can be both a help and a hindrance, and while I admit it's mostly a help, it does ruin your efforts to move the enemies.
7:41 also overhypes the damage increase. It's not all that great (if you have 50k HP, that's only a 16.6k damage increase on the meteor even before damage reductions), though I'd definitely take the free damage.
The main reason I play him is, so I don't have to constantly be out of stamina from dodging the myriad of ground AoEs and enemy attacks. This allows me to actually use charge attacks for characters that can make use of them. If stamina were less of a problem (especially in combat), I'd use him less but for the time being he never leaves my party since he makes the game fun for me.
I like that even after quitting league I can still watch Vars, since you are now actively making genshin videos as well
Love the Pokémon dungeons music in the background
Little correction on corrosion, the 15% max hp threshold is only for non-active party members, so even active members can die. The shield being able to block the actual attack itself is still nice though
Corrosion is a cheap way to counter shields IMO. Because when you're hit, that's it your entire party has corrosion and you're forced to build healers.
A better way to counterbalance shielders is to create mobs whose attacks can partially go through shield so players think twice about face tanking hits.
I.e. the lawachurl elemental attacks, the ruin units' lasers and missiles, some bosses' atacks should partially go through shields.
As cheap as it was to have unavoidable damage, I liked the corrosion on death mechanics of 2.1 abyss 11. It made you approach fights in a different way and actually plan your kills and healing, forcing a very unique approach where you could try to nuke all at once to avoid most of the corrosion by ending the fight.
Meanwhile currently corrosion beats shields on an enemy that is extremely erratic so face tanking them isn't even a good strat and would be awful to fight even without corrosion. Corrosion can work as a counter, but rifthounds do not.
The point of corrosion wasn't to make people not build shielders, it was made to force them to use healers. Sadly that's the only way to make them build healers without making all healers broken like Bennett
i think it's a good way to counter shields, actually. i like that stored party members take damage from it. we actually need more stuff that damages the entire party. next we need a curse effect that makes all party member share damage equally so you can't have a guy with 50k hp and three others with 9k.
as long as we stray from the glass cannon meta, i'm all for it.
ah yes because mihoyo definitively didn't also do this with shields
Corrosion is not the only attempt to counter shields, we had burning since the beginning of the game, but they are really pushing it in Inazuma. I guess that is what happens when you create a broken shield 🤷♂️
And we already have another mob that makes dmg ignoring shields, the dendro shaman hili, but I guess burning and any other status effects will come back with force with dendro. Right now burning is like non present in Inazuma and too weak in comparison. It's inevitable to have counter to shields trough status efects tbh, we had sings since the start, we had always have them.
And with how strong Zhongli is if you introduce attacks that can partially ignore shields you will render useless the rest of the charas with shields. If you made the scale trough shield strength, you will have shields that let pass too much dmg bc the shields already have less hp than Zhongli's shield, the % of dmg that goes trough would be greater as the total number of shield strength is far less. If you decide to set the dmg to a fixed number the shield can be rendered useless when facing multiple enemies, a tactic that is used a lot in open world and abyss.
Mmmm more like counter balance, it sounds like a way to make shields pointless in general 🤔 But I do like the idea of bosses that ignore dmg, I just can't think of a good way to balance it tho. Can you share some ideas? I do like the concept, how would you balance it? :D
4:43 Corection : this only happens for of field characters , if a character is on the field they can die from corosion
I was so hyped when i clicked on my subscribed thing but then i scrolled further down and saw i had to wait 85 minutes for another awesome video 😔
Heya! Just wanted to say, loved Temporal Tower being the background song.
I just got zhongli, and went from struggling with a lot of fights in world level 8, to never taking any damage from any enemies, dispite the fact that my zhongli is currently only level 40 with level 1 talents.
same here its awesome. I couldnt defeat a few quests and as soon as I got him I levelled what I could and then tried completing them. Needless to say I did them all first or second try woooo
literal god😂
Thank you so much! This kept me from giving up on saving for Zhongli! Best Zhongli review/guide I’ve seen so far!
Why I play him: he's my husbando 🥰🥰
He's honesty the reaspn why I caved and finally downloaded the game back in 1.1.
Even if meta is moving away from shields because of corrosion, I will still use him in many future content. But as you have said, there hasnt been another character who challenges his spot, so he'll be in the top for a while
Literally same except it was his rerun for 1.5 - his trailer had me dolphin for him, I had no idea he was so OP
i’ve loved him since I saw him and played him as a physical dps for most of my early genshin career
the gods eclipsing other units is just the mihoyo special, that's what happened in Honkai with the Herrchers.
Zhongli was the first 5* I ever got and, because of that, I’ve never built a healer in the game. I have Bennett built but purely as an attack boost. The corrosion debuff nerfed me so bad 😭😭
I always have him on my team, because one of my problems with Xiao before I pulled Zl was getting backhanded by things in the middle of his ult. Now with Zl, I don't have to worry about that sort of thing, and it's an immense help.
I really loved your League why no one plays series and I just found out about your second channel and it brings so much of your League videos to Genshin. Loving the content.
Regarding characters overshadowing other characters: I think Mihoyo shouldn’t focus making weaker characters but rather characters who are different A - per say, a character that could do roughly the same amount of dmg as any other SS+ DPS but has different gameplay. That way you have an actual reason to pull for said character other then meta
Kazuha, Raiden and Ayaka are all SS+. The problem of very powerful characters becomes less important as the roster increases since they're not making weaker characters over time.
@@AuthorityCat ?
@@ADHDgoldfish What he said is essentially powercreep. Since Mihoyo keeps adding stronger and stronger characters to the roster over time (as a general rule, it's not always the case), characters who used to be strong at the time of their release eventually gets powercrept by newer, better characters released later.
A great example of this is Diluc. He used to be a powerhouse when he first released - nowadays he's nothing special because better characters eventually overshadowed him.
I think that the game benefits from "gimmick" characters like Tartaglia and Hu Tao. Characters where you have to play a unique way are the characters that'll hard carry the game.
@@fish9347 Yes! exactly
im happy bennett has a high usage rate, my baby deserves it. he literally heals and buffs your team w/ his ulti (depending on your artifact choice)
For his Story Quest is the best for me specially the salt god one.
The ending of that quest gave me chills and feels at the same time.
This is a great vid you my subscibe!
Please do more
New video suggestions:
-Why no one plays: Yoimiya, Yanfei, Xingyang, Sara, why no one plays Diluc anymore
Which passive talent is the best
Why everyone plays: I don`t know, there are actually plenty of such videos on youtube
why nobody plays xy anymore is pretty interesting in general, but also easily explained in one of the channel's earlier videos: New units constantly get better in most of the cases and nobody wants to play the old ones anymore or even deem standard 5-star characters as bad
@@withlovemays That is a good explanation for most unused characters, but Xinyan was dead on arrival. People immediately stopped using her. She was the first of her kind and didn't stand out.
Yanfei is having a resurrection in china, because she can be made into a Tank with healing capabilities, making her perfect for Hu-Tao teams
@@priyanlevesque Yes. Double scaling, below average performance for a 4* and her shield being more of a nuisance than something that really helps
@@priyanlevesque she has a niche use now at higher constellations as a support for eula, but yeah, she was never really an ideal support to begin with and as a main DPS shes also not as good as say a Ningguang or a razor.
The Venti disrepect throughout this video
8:02
Him: the most unexplored element is the geo element
Dendro:am i joke to you
i would love to see more vids like this!!! i'm f2p and struggle to choose what characters to pull for, but this video completely sold me on zhongli :)
it's indeed really hard to not put zhongli in any teams for domain, abyss, or even exploration, not even corrosion can't stop me for using zhongli
I dont think ZhongLi is OP he is balanced, it is mostly when you prefer survivability over saving time via dmg and/or other benefits IMO, for example diona vs ZhongLi in a case of the lectors diona would be much better and in eula comps where cryo energy is much needed but in the cases where your characters do enough damage ZhongLi helps makes the content easier by giving more room for mistakes
by balanced you mean literally making healers unecessary?
@@DronesOverTheMoon Number 1 corruption is a thing and having a beefy shield doesnt mean its unbreakable and if u have seen the calcs his ult dmg goes down by alot to a point it is a dps loss if u build shiled solely so either u focus dmg wise or shield wise and then again majority of the healers can also solve other issues such as cleansing for jean cryo energy for diona TTDS for kokomi etc.
Let's not talk about nerfing him. I haven't even gotten him yet. I want to enjoy it when I get it.
Same haha
Lesser known tactic, you can use the pillars to block Magu Kenki's movements. At the beginning, if you have C1, place one pillar on each side and stand in front of it and it can't side step. You can place one behind you at the second phase and when he tries to teleport, it crash into the pillar so it doesn't travel far.
You missed one of his biggest features: mining.
His stele dropping will smash a huge amount of crystal chunks or whatever. This makes farming super easy.
I think the main thing that makes him OP is how short his CD is on skill. It means a massive shield up 100% of the time.
i actually think zhongli is at the perfect strength - taking away his resistance shred also removes half his benefits in xiao/geo teams, as his shield is the only way to reduce anemo and geo resistance in the game. his "immovable shield' is perfect for him, and i think the 20% res shred is the perfect offensive buff to the team. while i think his meteor does big damage, i also dont think its as crazy as you said it was. in burst form, itto's e skill can do as much damage as zhongli's burst - and zhongli doesn't do that as much damage if you build him for hp shield instead of atk. hes good, dont get me wrong, i hate playing without him and hes my favourite character + unit - but hes not overpowered. many top tier dps teams dont use him - national, morgana, taser, etc. however, hes still amazing.
*Osmanthus wine tastes the same as i remember but were are those who share the memory?*
5:14 like the vergil meme you did there I don't know if it was only for raiden or both zhongli and raiden but still good one
I don't like using Zhongli as i do less dmg compared to Sucrose in my vape teams, but all the interrumping bs there is in the abyss forces me to. Comfort, ease to use and utility outweights dmg gain.
I would gladly use dedicated healers like Barbruh and Qiqi if their E give interrumpion RES. You know, like Xingqiu's E or Beidou's Q.
Imagine caring about damage
@@maraisfan4life517 what's wrong with it? Abyss is a dps check not a survival check
Glad you went back to vars II xD
Anyway great video! You really deserve more attention
Short answer: No one knows how to dodge, or they just dont want to dodge.
Or theyre playing on mobile, dodging on mobile is tough
@@atrollnottobetakenseriousl1147 I play on mobile mainly and honestly in my experience it is just as tough as dodging on pc. Unless you experience a lot of lag, that is, but the same goes for pc as well.
3:28 I half expected you to bust out the pixel shades after tanking that charge. XD
First of all, I like Zhongli, Zhongli is indeed a very interesting and strong character in terms of gameplay and characteristics. As my shielder, even at C0, he's already broken and I'm happy with that for my Hu Tao. It's also the reason why he's always on top tier of meta.
HOWEVER, I disagree that when you compare him to Venti in terms of meta (not lore), it is not a fair comparison. Not because Venti is the weakest archon, but Venti is a cc unit in your team, with him in your team you have a better cc in the Abyss or any domains with crowd. Zhongli can provide shield and makes your team tankier, but he certainly CANNOT replace Venti and he cannot do what Venti can and vice versa.
Note: For me, if I rate our John Lee (or Zhongli), he's 4.5/5, he's an amazing tank unit and burst support, but he's not 100% a forced-to-pull unit if you know how to build strong teams with only 4* characters to clear 36* Abyss, then he's not a big of a deal.
Zhongli is the main reason why I got into Genshin in the first place
Even though I knew nothing about the game, I’d still watch the ads for the game because I thought the character designs were cool. But then the ad for Zhongli’s demo came up… oh boy, was I obsessed! He basically has some of my favorite character tropes: Calm and levelheaded, at least a little bit mysterious, intelligent but not a show off, and a total gentleman/woman/person with a kind soul but still kicks ass! Characters of those tropes are my bread and butter, and Zhongli is all of those!
I watched a 4 hour video by Altered Maverick that explained most of the Genshin storyline that was out at the time just because I wanted to know more about Zhongli. That video got me excited about the game and now I’m a f2p mobile player! (Keep in mind, I’m not a big video game person, so to get me excited about a video game is quite the achievement.) My cousin also told me that there will be a rerun of him in the next update, so I’m saving up my primogems like a madman. There are lots of 4 and 5 star characters I want, but if I had to only pick one that I could get, I would easily choose Zhongli
They actually legally cannot nerf him since this is a character gacha.
What they can do is diversify enemies and make healing a necessity, though. Perhaps even make some enemies that counter shields.
There's an enemy that gained a shield when it hit one and people started malding on reddit
people claim to want the meta to change but don't want the enemies to change... so they just want everything to function exctly the same? that'd be boring af
@@proles8 well I don’t really share the same opinion as those ppl so idk what you want me to say here? ig take it up w the ppl saying that
@@eevee2Glacia I meant as in telling you that there'll be an enemy that counters shields
The rest was moreso about people who complain about enemies countering certain stuff, which was a roundabout way of agreeing with you xP
@@proles8 OH FAIR ENOUGH I was genuinely confused by the response but
yeah that is weird. Hopefully people will just be able to adapt swiftly, I know I'll be building my Bennett as soon as physically possible.
love his personality, voice(his English VA is amazing and did an amazing job voicing him - his Korean and Chinese voices are also superb, but the Englishone fits best) and he's a dragon. ofc his design is also pretty. he's so calm and would make anyone feel safe. the man is husband material(ofc I'm not going to ignore his less than stellar actions, but nobody is perfect). though honestly, by his appearance and the way he acts , if put in human years, I think zhongli is at best in his late twenties/early thirties(just my theory).
I'm a casual player and I don't really play the game for abyss, but to relax. I don't care how weak he was originally, to me he is best. I am definitely going for his constellations.
These videos always hurt me lol, I HATE playing Zhongli and I LOVE playing Keqing, yet I can never find myself able to take Zhongli off my team or use Keqing for any of the more challenging parts of the game when I have Ayaka, Hu Tao, and Ganyu.
Same. I hate it so much.
i hate meta characters and i only respect people who stray from them.
keqing is actually viable, just invest enough in her and make a good comp. my friend clears every abyss with her as a main dps on one side and his keqing isn't even thaaaaaaaat stacked (he does have like almost all the 5 star swords tho)
i've been phasing out bennet, xingqiu and xiangling whenever i can. they're strong, but they're boring and the community spoiled them to me with their incessant brown-nosing.
At least Zhongli makes Keqing a whole lot more viable imo. It’s really hard trying to get good damage output on the rifthounds with Keqing so every second counts
@@GraveUypo Give anyone money and they will start playing DPS Barbara. Over investing and claiming someone is good is so dumb. I love Keqing and so I'll pull Mistsplitter and Kazuha for her, but that doesn't change the fact that she is shit. Using same investment, I could pull Homa and Kazuha for Hu Tao and get way more returns than Keqing.
I used Keqing/Fischl/Xingqiu/Zhongli when PMA was on 12-3
And for this abyss Keqing/Fischl/Barbara/Kazuha since I needed more shield breaking
She works fine, though I also have none of those three, since none of them appeal to me lol
The reason Zhongli can use the Jade Shield from ver.1.3 onwards to reduce nearby resistance is that the player denounces the official claim that he is a shield supporter, but puts this ability in c2. Erecting pillars and easily interfering with elemental reactions, and the damage of ordinary attacks is also low, so the official must let him provide other auxiliary effects in multiplayer mode at c0.
Spiral Abyss is definitely popular, even though I stopped at floor 7. I never once played Zhongli long enough and I have him in my roster from way back a year ago during his release. I leveled him up to 40 and I believe that was it and forgot I had him till I saw this video. I use Noelle as a geo user and have her at C6 which makes her a beast. I have her ready to handle a lot of defensive measures plus she's a battlemaid which is a huge plus factor.
aaaa hope i overcome this dilemma between zhongli and ganyu, i didnt got him since his last rerun, hoping to get him in the next patches
Get both ;)
@@VarsII YUP I WILL GET THEM BOTH
And about his Burst, yes it has big % but due to the slow animation most people say using it is a dps loss most of the time and when you go full HP% the damage is almost non existant. While most you say is very true a few things feel exaggerated xD
The long animation offsets the fact that his damage is so good. There really isn't such a thing as DPS loss. Really if you are worried abt being at a "damage loss", you're already doing high enough damage to the point where most things don't live long anyway.
@@fish9347 In abyss every second can potentially count is all I mean with that. Regardless he is a must have imo for maximum comfort playing and open world. I crowned both skill und may exaggerated a bit, admittedly.
@@PrinceVinc Fair. I just think people often undersell Zhongli's ability to be a DPS
I love these kinds of analysis videos and I think it would be great to take a look into their actual character designs/their appearances. If that's something you think you could do then that'd definitely be awesome!
Honestly, Mihoyo screwed themselves when they buffed Zhongli so hard. They can't go back because the players will mald like never before and I think they are probably incredibly wary of buffing characters at all after they've been implemented now.
If you hold down Razor's E, it also instantly explodes nearby ores! He's my extremely low budget exploration Zhongli, but it's such a pain pulling him out because I don't use him otherwise
I feel like it’s because the character looks good great voice actor and decent utility for this game in particular. If every character was like that every character would be viable.
His Ultimate is like : "This world shall know pain"
Not exactly everyone, more like early to mid game player. A lot of late game players move on to supports that can provide more damage since survival is really not that big of an issue.
Xiao is the only one who actually needs Zhongli i believe for the anemo res shred,also him being vulnerable with no heals unlike Hu Tao
@@eviez6205 also melt ganyu, but both have other alternatives that can push for higher damage if you are high end player
@@eviez6205 To be completely honest, even xiao doesnt need zhongli in particular. Most xiao teams only have zhongli because there is literally no one else that you can pair with him.
More like the endgame players choose him because they already have enough DPS to 36 stars lol.
Great vid, and great music taste, tower of time do be fitting for Zhongli
everyone still literally thinks you need him to complete abyss 100% of the time because of how much people say he's good, when people only either want him because they want to play braindead and not dodge, or use Zhongli in actual comps like Melt Ganyu/Hu Tao since they're the ones who actually need him to maximize their damage lol
I agree with this cause dps char like ganyu, hutao and xiao really need a shield character like Zhongli because how squishy they are tho I mean childe weekly boss can one shot xiao just because how squishy xiao become when he use his Q
First impression: THIS MAN BROKE
Short answer:
I WILL HAVE ORDER !!!
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I love how you see everything from a viewpoint of facts no biased opinions or anything some minor jokes here and there
I would say Zhongli’s viability is misunderstood and I would like to clarify with some of the points you made and why I do not agree. Zhongli is mostly good because he can make Ganyu, Xiao, Hu Tao, and Eula better. Without those four top meta defining characters demanding a good shield, Zhongli would not be as good as he is.
Zhongli’s damage is still very lackluster. His AoE is small on his skill and is still a 5050 on whether you generate geo particles. His burst, while beeg number, is actually not as much DPS as you may think. It is one of the longest bursts to cast, a total of 3 seconds. In that time, your Hu Tao, your Ganyu, and your Xiao could do much more damage. You use the petrify to survive or you use it to hold them in place for some reason but it has no grouping ability so gl with RNG.
His shield will not increase every DPS’s damage. Your Xiangling international team will not get better with Zhongli, it will get better with Kazuha, Childe, or Raiden. Because we currently have many main top Main DPSes that can improve because of the survivability, Zhongli shield is valuable.
This is especially seen for Eula and Xiao, Eula has low poise values unlike Diluc, meaning she cannot interrupt certain enemies from doing their attacks like samurai and the rifthounds. That design then creates demand for a Zhongli or Diona. On the other hand, Xiao and Zhongli do not have some sort of strong synergy like Xiangling and Bennett or Ganyu with Venti. But what Zhongli does for xiao is provide one of the few forms of anemo resistance shred and fix Xiao’s frailness. While you can dodge attacks with jump, you can’t dodge during your plunge. It’s just character design demanding certain supports to fix their problems that is what makes Zhongli good.
Zhongli is not good because he is Geo either, I know this wasn’t a point but I want to say that, not mentioning that crystallize shields (or any other shield for that matter) do not stack on top of each other can be misleading to some players who are unaware. A crystallize shield takes the same damage as Zhongli shield, meaning it does not increase the HP of the shields you have. They would both break simultaneously if they had the same amount of HP rendering crystallize shields to be very useless with Zhongli.
I should also clarify for the Zhongli meatball burst point. A F2P Zhongli with good investment and favonius lance (pretending we are trying to maximize his damage) can do at best, 40k damage at lvl 8 burst. In that same three seconds, blackcliff xiao could do nearly 80k dmg with sucrose ttds buff and zhongli shield and much much more if we account for the 5 seconds it takes to regularly switch and set up xiao again. I use xiao as the example because that is a popular team Zhongli finds himself in and we should compare the amount of time you spend on the team’s rotation. Also, Xiao and Zhongli burst have around the same AoE so I thought that would be a more fair comparison.
I feel that the major factor why people overrate him is that he has a high use rate but in actuality, he is never the best in slot in any team other than xiao geo and mono geo. That might even change if mihoyo releases a specialized support made for xiao like what they are doing with sara, thoma and gorou.
@@utaku434 That’s a great point and I think you’re correct. For anybody reading our comments, just know that Zhongli is a good character but not everything about him is good. “Big meatball number” might not be worth the three seconds for example. There may be a better character worth using more, but Zhongli is a safe choice.
Can someone pass me the copium? *snorts 🥲👍 i pulled him for his character personality.. back then, i only played genshin for the story and never knew abyss existed or knew how it works. Lol
@@utaku434 Tbh, a flexible character that's 2nd - 4th best in a lot of places is better than somone who's #1 but falls off heavily out of their element
unrelated to Zhongli, but i wish hoyo would release a geo character that actually ulitilizes the crystallize shields. imagine a character that depending on which element is crystallized it gives different buffs to the party/active character: pyro gives atk%, hydro gives max hp, cryo gives crit rate or immunity to cryo effects (frozen and slow) , and electro gives ER or flat energy generation
if im being honest. i want to see a healer that, when healer heals, they give a status that just makes the current character unflinching. to balance this out there would be a healing threshhold here the character can heal, but not give the unflinching status. i think this is balanced enough and to make it to a similar power level to zhongli we can just make the corresion status not capped to only deal damage to 15% but to death and i think it creates a choice; do i want healing and unflinching, or do i want resistance shred and unflinching. and the f2p that cant get either of these characters doesnt matter because either way, theyre using healers
you can just being a geo character for crystallize along with your healer (like albedo with bennett)
@@proles8 crystallized shields are so weak they might not even exist
@@evotheevolutions Not when your Itto stacks def or you have damage reduction
Or it serves as stagger interruption
Plus it's especially good against elemental monsters like the oceanids
@@proles8 you're saying that when zhongli is in the game
@@evotheevolutions Not everyone has Zhongli