Genshin Impact | 5.2 Special Program

[Dragon Lord]

I have gotten other multi 5* pulls before. When I was C6ing Ganyu, I got a Ganyu and Mona in a 10. Then I believe I got two Ayaka copies in one ten pull when I was C6ing her as well, but I could be remembering wrong.

Yeah, R1 Redhorn is going to be the best on Noelle too. She's scales the exact same way Itto does, so whatever is best for him is going to be best for her as well.

I guess some people are just really bad at this game, haha. I mean, I can use the characters I've never used (like Kaeya) and still get through the levels just fine. Not sure how they struggle. But if they struggled in this event... wait until the next one: The good ol' Energy Amplifier event is coming back! I can't wait to see what bosses we'll be forced to super buff and fight this time around. /s

From what it sounds like so far, Senhe is going to end up being just an Ayaka/Ganyu support bot and nothing else. Kind of a big oof for a new 5*. Unfortunately a lot of hype for her has completely died because of this news. Not really sure why MiHoYo thought that was needed though. Ayaka's already got a perfect team in the Permafreeze comp (Venti/Diona/Mona) and Ganyu can either do that same team, or the reverse melt comp with Xiangling. Neither one of them needs a new support character that apparently only works with them.

No word on a second artifact set yet. Just the one that's apparently going to be the new BiS for Keqing and will provide her a good power boost.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah, yeah sounds quite lucky. I was stupidly watching some videos on Genshin, a Tiktok one where someone got five 5* in a row through single pulls, although 4 was in a character banner and the fifth one on the permanent banner, but damn some peeps get even luckier. My closest for early/good luck was getting my second SoH a few pulls after Elegy. Boo.

I did reach soft pity on the weapon banner, although it came just a bit earlier that but of course it had to be Skyward Harp instead of the Redhorn I wanted. So fingers crossed I get another 5* weapon, preferably Redhorn like I just mentioned above. I decided to try out Mono Geo team with Noelle, Ningguang, Albedo and Zhongli (they're the only ones I have not counting Traveler) and realised it's fun. My Ningguang is already level 70 ascended so I boosted her up to 79, farmed a bit for some better artifacts, swapped Zhongli's Geo goblet on her, put a HP goblet on him instead, plus temporarily gave him SoH. Did Daily Commissions, farming domains with them (using 9 Condensed Resin), plus fought Geo Hypostasis too and had a hell of a good time. My Noelle definitely fits better in that team, doing more damage than she was before which was good to see. Oh and increased each of their talents a bit too, some of the short building time I did after fighting so they should be better next time I play with them as a team. My Albedo's a Lv 69 at the moment though, so more to do plus ascend Ningguang to 80.

There are two reasons why I chose to start using Ningguang again, the first was for Mono Geo, the other was after seeing her upcoming figurine, and holy crap. I knew there was Paimon, Klee and Mona but didn't know of Ningguang, Ganyu and Keqing's and each have their figurine up on pre-order. I-I-want one of them. Er, two, er all three....?! Oh and also again from stupidly watching videos earlier, came across what appeared to be an image of Ningguang's new skin, it's much better than I thought it might be. Going to be needing that, and I also like Keqing's, but need to insist I'm playing Ning again for her figurine, not the skin! *shot*

If Shenhe's only good for Ayaka/Ganyu then I'll probably won't need her on my F2P account, so either save or see if people find out she's decent without them.

[Dragon Lord]

So my Noelle is pretty good now. I got lucky and finally got a full set of decent Husk pieces. She's sitting on 76.9% Crit Rate and 219% Crit Damage (rate could be a tad higher, but oh well). Her rate is good enough to be critting consistently and during her Burst with Gorou's Burst active, she's critting for 40-45K damage. 30K-ish without his Burst active. Important to note that is with a C0 Gorou with LEVEL 1 TALENTS AND NO ARTIFACTS. Once I actually build my Gorou, Noelle should see a bit more of a buff. Maybe up to 45-50K crits.

I absolutely cannot wait to see what Noelle's peak is going to look like with Yun Jin. I also need to finish building my Albedo so I get those big damage procs from his flower while Noelle is going to town. Right now I'm getting about 10K damage from it, but I haven't really built his artifacts yet. I only have two decent pieces on him and he lacks a Geo DMG Goblet, so that's hurting him quite a bit right now. Funny, when Albedo first ran, I was like, ew, no way I want that kid. He looks like he sucks. Boy how times sure do change though. Now I absolutely love him because he pairs up so perfectly with Noelle. He's also a great pairing for Yoimiya too, since she will get his flower to constantly proc.

I've also been doing the Hu Tao/Xinqui/Zhongli/Albedo team, and it's pretty damn good. I actually prefer it a lot over running Thoma/Anemo with Hu Tao and her little water pet. Though once Kazuha re-runs, that might change. While Sucrose is decent for swirling Pyro and giving VV shred for Hu Tao, I just feel like Kazuha is going to be able to do it much better, over a bigger area and provide a big damage bonus on top of it. Plus he's able to output some crazy damage on his E.Skill as well. I fully plan to C6 Kazuha as well, so that's just going to make whatever team he's on that much better.

I finished the Misty Dungeon finally, my teams for the final stages were...

Amplifying Trial: Ayaka-Xiangling-Rosaria-Thoma

Wanted to bring Thoma just for shielding since he was the only one who provided it on this trial. Ended up not really needing it. Rosaria was for the Crit Rate buff + Cryo res with Ayaka. Xiangling for melting with Ayaka. Ayaka for... well, being Ayaka. Even though the Ayaka build in this event is uber trash, it was still super easy to bulldoze throough this stage in about 5 minutes.

Transformative Trial: Yoimiya-Albedo-Fischl-Diona

Pretty obvious team for this one. The fact they provide you with a good single target DPS in Yoimiya plus two of the best off-field damage dealers in the game for her in Albedo and Fischl made it a clear choice. Throw in Diona for the shields and emergency heals and this one was smooth sailing all of the way.

Lightbringer Trial: Kazuha-Keqing-Mona-Raiden

Obviously was going to take Kazuha here to play around with him more. Decided to with Keqing because I wanted to see if I could notice if Kazuha really made her that much better. Unfortunately I don't think the builds in this event are good enough to notice any significant difference. Brought Raiden for Electro res with Keqing and to fill Bursts quickly. Mona was just for extra damage from Omen. In the end I should have went with Ayaka freeze comp and tested how good Kazuha was in there. Overall still got through this easy and finished off the event no sweat.

Man, cannot wait for Kazuha re-run after this event. He's so fun to use.

[Mr EliteL]

Damn I'd better try and nab a single Gorou then if he's doing that well not being built even. Haven't pulled yet on the new banner, but with Yun Jin on the next banner it'll be good to mix and match between the Geo characters for the team, plus hopefully allowing Zhongli able to be on a different team as Geo is shields galore. Also still lacking a Redhorn, damn it.

I did the Misty Dungeon quickly yesterday morning before the time limit ran out on my F2P account. Got a better damage score on with Raiden/Eula team like I thought I would, did run a couple different teams but can't remember what now, I just went in to get it over and done with. I know I didn't use Diluc in the trial he was featured in though, used Ayaka again instead.

Started to try out the Energy Amplifier last night on my main, maxing the difficulty and still not ready for that yet unfortunately. Have to turn it down a notch if I want tory and get the most I can out of the event, kinda dreading trying my poorly built F2P team there but hope I can just get a pass at least for the Primos.

The Special Program for 2.4 came out yesterday, wasn't aware of it until very late after I finished up on Genshin for the night and was out when it was on live. Will check it out later but the short version trailer I did watch, and looks to be good but not the Windtrace event, don't think I'll be doing that, again. Story-wise that looks great, was wondering how the Jade Chamber returns already, but there's an event for us to restore that beforehand. Here's both:

....


OH FLIPPING FLOPPY FLAPPERS, the redeem codes, shite! I forgot! Too tired last night to remember them...

[Dragon Lord]

Lots to talk about this update...

First off... THREE RE-RUNS BANNERS?! Oof. I mean, I don't have to worry about Ganyu because I have her C6 already. Though I would be very tempted to pull for Amos' Bow refinements to max out my Ganyu...

Zhongli... I was considering pulling for C2 Zhong when his next re-run came, because it'd be nice to have the co-op shielding. Gonna be hard to decide what to do since I also may want to invest in some pulling for Shenhe/Yun Jin.

Xiao... I thought about pulling him because he is fun to play, but sadly I think with how they are doing this, I'm going to have to skip him once again. Pulling for Shenhe + Yun Jin C6 + Zhongli C1/C2 + possibly Amos' Bow R5 is going to be crazy enough. I think the only saving grace would be if Yun Jin happens to be on the re-run banners as well. Then I could pull for a single copy of Shenhe, and then switch to pulling on the Xiao banner for the rest of my Yun Jin copies. Since Xiao re-run is going with Shenhe's banner, I'm going to assume the four-stars will be the same on each, so I think there's a good chance this scenario does happen. The only thing that could derail this is if Shenhe has a good C1/C2 that I might want to get.

Keqing skin is GOREGOUS AND I WILL THROW MY ENTIRE BANK ACCOUNT AT IT! ...Okay so it won't take that much to get it, but I am 100% getting it. Absolutely adore Keqing and she's the biggest reason why I even got interested in Genshin pre-release anyways. So I'm definitely going to give her this beautiful skin.

New area looks great, new enemies look awesome, that dual-boss fight looks sweet (I hope each one has their own health bar and they don't just share one), and the new possible weekly boss fight looks insane. Looks like they are bringing our friend from the Liyue chapter back for us to beat up whenever we please. Wonder how the fight will go this time though, since obviously the fight in the story was pretty batty with all of the Fatui dropping in and the boss raining down attacks at us.

The only bad thing about this patch is... they are bringing back that GOD AWFUL Windtrace event. UGH! Apparently they are disabling Mona and Ayaka's unique sprinting animation this time around because so many people used Mona to cheese it the first time around, haha. If you didn't know, due to how Mona's sprinting animation works, and how you can stay in place during it, you could hide some place that hid the little puddle/bubble effect while you're sprinting, and just stay there the whole time. If the Hunter wasn't aware enough to try and do a capture in those specific spots, you'd never be found. Unless of course you got tagged by the hunter ability that revealed your location. I am not looking forward to doing this event again though. I'll probably just do what I did the first time -- If I'm the hunter, I'll just sit there and let the hiders win since it's so annoying to try and get wins as them. If I'm a hider, I'll just go some place and hope that it works out. If not, oh well.

[Mr EliteL]

Yup I wasn't expecting Zhongli AS WELL to be part of the next banners, thought it was going to be like 2.3 with two double re-run together and the new character. Makes me wonder what'll be coming for 2.5 because Kazuha and Ayaka will be next longest without a re-run or we'll see Venti or Klee return again....just not Tartaglia as he's had his third already and very early at that, and now Zhongli's third is approaching. So perhaps with the amount of 5* characters there are now, and we know Yae will be on her way along with the inevitable new region that will have their 5*'s, the double re-runs look to be staying, I hope.

I need more events though, my Primogems need topping up. I'll be exploring to get 100% now everywhere I can to gather what I can. Most of 2.5 looks great, with Enkanomiya being the place to explore. Can't wait for that, well....I can for the amount of farming and treasure searching I need to do before then. Both on my main and F2P account, yikes. I am at Inazuma now on that, at World Level 7 and about to be 8 too, but I hope I can get Kokomi up to Lv 80 unascended at least as well as ascend Beidou, Rosaria, Amber and Lumine.

The Keqing skin, I thought it was meant to be a wintery one unless that was something else I saw, but the one shown is better.

[Dragon Lord]

Venti's next re-run will likely come in March when they hold another Windblume event. I can see Klee re-running again here soon though.

Since Kazuha has strong connections to Inazuma/Raiden, I can see him re-running in 2.5 when Yae releases. Maybe Ayaka/Kazuha or Raiden/Kazuha re-runs with Yae being the other half of the patch. Or they could do the same as in 2.5 and have Kazuha/Ayaka on one half and Yae/Raiden on the other. Not sure where/when a Yoimiya re-run would fit though. Obviously there's still going to be 2.6 and likely 2.7 to go. With how the releases go though, I imagine that 2.6 will be the Windblume Festival, bringing a Venti and possibly Klee re-run with it. They could also surprise us with a brand new Mondstadt character as well.

Then I could see 2.7 being The Chasm, bringing Yaoyao possibly. I don't imagine they wait until 3.0 or later to finally release The Chasm. Unless they're planning something like us having to pass through The Chasm to get to Sumeru (I don't remember where Sumeru is supposed to be relative to every other nation, so it might not be any where close to The Chasm in the end).

[Moonface]

I just read that there's a character called Fischl and that she has a raven named Oz who speaks for her, and that apparently the latter hasn't been shown in the game for a while because the VA for Oz was found to be doing a lot of abusive and manipulative stuff with fans of the game? Have you guys noticed the lack of said character?

[Mr EliteL]

I didn't notice per-say just assumed she'd eventually show up. I also read about that earlier on the Discord I'm on for Genshin, a user mentioned that, and it's the Chinese VA is the one that's done it. The user said the VA cheated on their wife, so perhaps that includes fans? That is deplorable, but at the same time I don't think that should affect the character herself, because Fischl is the main character out of the two, I'd get it more if Oz was the actual playable character and Fischl was the familiar. Ah well, if that's how they want to deal with that part of the character than so be it. I have C6 Fischl on my main account, although don't have her on my F2P. Huh, OK suppose I did notice but didn't think in that way that there could be an actual reason for her absence. I wanted her as my main bow user for F2P but had to resort to Amber.

[Moonface]

From what I read it does include fans. I also overlooked that being the Chinese VA probably means it might only impact the game in Chinese speaking markets, since there would be no reason to remove the character in regions where it features a different VA. Fischl is still present as normal, it's just apparently whenever Oz is mentioned he just simply doesn't appear and presumably any lines involving him are also just not spoken. I don't know how much he speaks but I'm imagining funny scenes where dialogue just has awkward silences where no one speaks because it's supposed to be Oz who is now absent. XD

[Dragon Lord]

Just gonna post this here really quick as I don't have much time before I need to leave for work, but 2.5 leaks have surfaced that indicate that the characters released for the patch will be Yae Miko (MiHoYo posted about her on Twitter, pretty much confirming this one) with Raiden and Kazuha re-running.

Looks like I won't have to wait too much longer to fix my mistake of skipping Kazuha.

[Mr EliteL]

@Moonface Oz usually talks almost whenever Fischl says something, as she speaks in an outlandish manner and he kind of interprets a more simplified meaning or adds something extra, they also talk to each other as well. It can be comical and it's part of what I like about them too. Unfortunate his dialogue has been cut in Chinese now, maybe they're replacing the VA.

Ah, already 2.5 leaks before 2.4 gets her, yay. It's good they posted an image of Yae to confirm she's next. So it seems it'll be Raiden and Kazuha as well. You did call that as a possibility. Fudge, too many banners I want to wish on then, darn. I have to avoid some I think. At the moment, Shenhe's for Yun Jin, Zhongli C1, Yae and Kazuha are high on my imaginary list. Then someone for my F2P as I'm extremely close to soft pity, thinking my next pull or few will be a 5*.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, I may have to rethink what I'm going to do in 2.4 as well if Kazuha is really coming in 2.5, since I really want to C6 him because he's absolutely bonkers at C6. Granted nothing in the game requires having a C6 5* to clear, but I like seeing those big PP numbers pop up on the screen. Especially when you can watch Kazuha just wipe out an entire crowd of enemies in like two seconds with this elemental skill, haha.

I'll probably still pull for Xiao though. Even though I don't really plan on ever using him for anything like the Abyss, he is fun to play and I can definitely see myself enjoying using him for overworld exploration and such.

As for Shenhe, she's a wait-and-see type of character for me right now. Gonna let all the team builders and theory crafters have their time with her to see just what she brings to the table for a team. If it turns out that C0 Shenhe would bring a significant buff to my Reverse Melt Ganyu, then I may go for her. Though if it turns out Shenhe is a C4/C6 locked 5*, she's an easy skip for now and maybe I'll consider her during a re-run.

C1 Zhongli is important to me because the extra pillar would make my Mono Geo team much better. Especially since you can slap down his two pillars + Albedo's flower for a ton of resonating between them, which will just add that much more damage and energy particles to it. I'd love to go for C2 Zhongli in the chance I ever decide to do co-op seriously, but I think I can wait on that for his next re-run.

So 2.4 plans are:

-Pull C0 Xiao
-Pull C1 Zhongli
-Get as many Yun Jin copies that I can
-Pull C0 Shenhe if she proves to be decent enough
-Pull for Shenhe's weapon if it proves to be the BiS for her by a huge margin, but may skip if a 4* option proves to be nearly as good
-Sadly skip pulling for Refinement levels on Amos' Bow, since they cursed that banner with Vortex Vanquisher

Then I prepare to get my booty blasted by 2.5 when I'll want to pull for Yae and C6 Kazuha.

[Moonface]

I hope this wasn't covered in here already and I missed it but if not, it looks like some of the characters are getting new outfits? - https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/...alternate/

[Dragon Lord]

Not really new outfits. They are getting redesigned because apparently the CCP has taken an issue with some of them. Why is this happening? I have no idea. I can only assume that the CCP deems them "too sexy" or something. Even though Jean and Amber's designs are hardly changed. Rosaria does get improved because her new design doesn't give off "slutty nun Halloween costume" vibes.

I do like Mona's redesign though. Not more than her original, but I do think it looks really cute. It trades the sexiness of her original outfit for cuteness, and I'm okay with that.

Also important to note that these designs will be replacing the original designs completely in the Chinese server. However, for NA and EU, these designs will be added as alternative options to their original designs, allowing us to switch back and forth as we please. However, no word yet on whether or not MiHoYo is going to make us pay for these or give them as free updates.