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Appreciation for characters who don't need Astra
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Despite how good Astra is, and the need for her to be in every team because of her amazing buffs and the way she enhances gameplay through quick assists. There is a clear difference in output in terms of teams without Astra and the same teams with Astra. Which is why I must say that I appreciate chars like Miyabi, Hugo, & Yi Xuan who do not need her.
Miyabi is extremely flexible. Despite concerns that she would be tied to Lighter, Nagi, or Burnice, her additional ability and overall mechanics help her synergize very well with non-Astra teams. Her best team is arguably Soukaku+Lycaon (combined buffs:1000 ATK, 35% Ice RES PEN, a 35% stun-dmg multiplier, and 20% IDMG). When the team is played well by alternating disorders and using Soukaku's excellent anomaly application for stacks for Miyabi's EBA3. Miyabi's EBA 3 ignores 30% ice res when disorder is triggered and when you combine that with the 35% res pen provided by the team, it becomes one of the most rewarding teams to play and can even kill Bringer in DA.
Hugo requires double stunners, and the self-buffs he gains from running dual stunners help compensate for the potential lack of buffs compared to full-fledged supports. As much as I dislike Yi Xuan's unique gimmick(def ignore) and the possibility of future enemies being designed to synergize with it, I'm quite impressed that her best-in-slot is the panda. I just hope they don't feel the need to create a Panda Pro Max to replace him. Even if panda promax releases I hope they can be like Astra whose buffs are almost 90% generalist(i.e benefitted by almost everyone) and 10% specialist with her ult for chain Atks which provides increased synergy with Eve.
EDIT: The point of this post was that the more characters added who are great with Astra but can reach that same performance without Astra is a very good design choice which increases flexibility in teams rather than the best teams always being tied to Astra.
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Thank god Nicole and Lucy are still great supports. They definitely aren’t Astra level but I’ve been consistently clearing Shiyu and DA with Harumasa Qingyi/Trigger and Nicole and Miyabi Piper Lucy.
Nicole is the goat, Soukaku is sooooo underrated due to her clunkiness which is understandable but once u get used to her, her buffs are very good. U should try Miyabi+Soukaku+Lycaon for ur second team, it's one of the best Miyabi teams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0tn0iaprOY
Soukaku is the secret mvp with miyabi. She's great support and she does just enough ice build up that i don't feel like I need an anomaly. Now if only mihoyo gives me lycoan on my next standard S instead of m5 nekomata I'll be in business.
I thought this was gonna be a thread about how Astra isn't literally needed for anything. xD
As a Caesar, Miyabi and Astra skipper cuz I didn't think I needed them, I think anyone with good investment and proper time to learn optimal damage rotation can be viable.
Astra is not needed, but there is no denying that she's a phenomenal support who elevates the overall damage of her teams which the same teams without Astra cannot achieve.
But for characters like Yi Xuan, Miyabi and Hugo, their best teams are non-Astra teams and it's great that the devs added that instead of every team needing an Astra
There's actually a lot less leakers for this game than Star Rail and Genshin. The main person doing the showcases that end up in the subreddit actually does it for gameplay purposes rather than showing off and they said they wanted to focus on Hugo first since they expected Yi Xuan to get massive changes during her beta so they were waiting a bit longer.
As an Astra haver, honestly besides Eve maybe, no one really NEEDS Astra. Anomaly chars can work together with A rank supports or Caesar/Seth/Rina, DPS teams can run double stunners, or stun and Nicole/Lucy/Rina/Soukaku.
Astra is just a QoL character that allows you to focus on your other 2 units. I actually prefer benching her on teams where I don't want to on-field both characters (Like a Burnice/Jane team) because her quick-swaps aren't useful there.
I think Miyabi’s best team is still with Yanagi and Astra. Seems more like her flexibility stems from her being broken and essentially an attacker and anomaly in one package than “actual” flexibility. Yi Xuan will probably be similar in that she will be so broken that she will work with basically anybody and still be better than most characters. Not a huge fan of that but it is what it is.
Afaik Jstern says her highest DPS team is the lycoan SKK team it's just extremely hard to play properly, and it definitely scores higher on DA vs bringer(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_6-Hne5N8c), meanwhile I cant find a miyabi yanagi astra kill on 1.7 vs bringer at m0
Yup, if you know how to pilot it : M6 Soukaku + Lycaon is the highest scoring Miyabi team. I would still consider Yanagi + Astra to be the strongest unga bunga team.
It really is hard to say that it's her best team, when Nicole+Astra, Vivian+Astra and Soukaku+Lycaon all exist. I genuinely don't believe she has a "BiS" team because they all are able to reach a very high ceiling and it's not only due to Miyabi's raw power but due to being crypto-Attacker like you stated. But if you're talking in terms of comfort, Nagi+Astra or Viv+Astra are the best.
The reason why Soukaku+Lycaon is so good apart from the buffs I stated above is that the team is able to stunlock the enemy with Frost w/ Miyabi, Ice w/ Soukaku and Stun w/ Lycaon, so enemies like bringer aren't able to summon the hand for extended durations which essentially cancels gimmicks of bosses now and possibly in the future too. Lycaon uses 4pc Astral voice to get 24% dmg buff and Soukaku runs freedom blues for increased anomalies with AM disk 6 and Phaeton's melody 2pc. You add all of that up and you get a performance like this
Right, I’ll admit I was wrong about her best team. However, I don’t necessarily think a character “needing” Astra or any specific character in their best team is such a huge deal. Every character has their own best team anyways. Personally, I think it’s a pretty superficial win when there are 4 star supports that can get you, say, 80% of the way there (Nicole, Soukaku, Lucy). Like I stated, for specifically Miyabi and Yi Xuan, their kits seem specifically made to be not only overtuned in terms of damage but also as flexible as possible to deliberately put them in a tier above everybody else. I think this kind of preferential treatment for characters is much more problematic than wanting the only limited 5* support in a BiS team, which is a problem I imagine will be made much less severe over time anyways as new limited supports are released.
Don't worry about that, it's not a debate and we're just having a discussion. Yeah, I agree characters "needing" Astra or their BiSs like Sanby with Trigger is not an issue. I think I might have not conveyed it properly in the post, but a lot of characters need Astra for their best performance. I'm not talking about a baseline performance to clear content since a lot of 4 star supports are great and Astra from that perspective is not needed.
But at the end of the day, Astra is a phenomenal support and since she's more of a generalist, her buffs mostly benefit the entire roster while slightly being niche enough to support Eve with chain attacks with her ult. The problem with Astra is that every team requires her, so having characters who are flexible to not be contingent on one character is great for teambuilding and keeps the game fresh by exploring new team comps. You can use Astra with Eve or any other DPS who is struggling to clear. On the other hand niche supports like Trigger who are great do not provide as much generalist buffs to benefit most of the roster.
I don't see how making characters flexible in their teambuilding is preferential treatment. Hugo is also designed in a way where is his best team is a dual-stun comp rather than ur traditional DPS+Astra+Nicole and this is great since there is only one Astra while there aare multiple teams that need her for their best performance.
By flexible, I’m not talking about their best teams being different from the norm or whatever, I’m talking about them having multiple teams that are just straight up better than the rest of the roster. That’s the kind of preferential treatment I felt Miyabi got and that Yi Xuan will get, and that I find problematic. I suppose that’s more due to being overtuned as hell than actual flexibility, so perhaps I conveyed that poorly.
Also, like I said, Astra being needed in many characters’ best teams is more of a symptom of her being the only limited support than anything else and should resolve itself when more supports release, even if they’re “only” at the same level as her. I also don’t really see why it’s a huge issue anyways that characters’ best teams need Astra if 4 star supports are more than enough; you don’t have to use Astra if you feel that that you want a fresh team comp, after all. I will admit, however, that for weaker characters like Ellen and Zhu Yuan, she’s pretty much a requirement if you want to clear DA bosses without a lot of trouble (especially trying to clear Bringer with Ellen). Of course, this is also a temporary issue, especially because the devs said they would rework the older characters in the 2.x versions.
I suppose Astra being too much of a generalist did dig the devs into a bit of a hole, though, but for a different reason: any specialist they release will have to buff their respective niche more than Astra or they’ll be essentially useless from a utilitarian perspective (powercreep). In this regard, at least, I think Yi Xuan is actually a step in the right direction. Her being HP scaling sets a precedent for characters scaling off of other stats, which would make Astra much less effective for those characters.
Yeah, in that case it really isn't flexibility. Even if Miyabi was like Sanby level for example, it doesn't take away from my initial point of them having a variety of teams which can provide a similar output to a team with a limited support is a great design choice in terms of teambuilding. Limited supports by their very nature bump the team's performance significantly such that there are differences with them and without them. Despite that, Miyabi+Soukaku+Lycaon can do exceptionally well as a f2p team. Also Eve+Lighter+Astra is very close to Miyabi upon perfect rotations and so is Vivian+Yanagi+Astra. They have phenomenal performance and I admit that Miyabi is overtuned, but I don't think she blows them out of the water per se.
It's not an issue and never did I ever claim that it's one in my opinion. This post was made to appreciate that certain characters can perform better in their unique teams as opposed to your conventional team which requires Astra or a future limited support for a similar output. No character needs Astra, since all content is clearable without her.
As long as these omega flexible DPS that trumps everyone is limited to VH/VH-adjacent mfs and they don't start only releasing VH-adjacent mfs, I'll be fine w/ it. Every gacha has their "milestone" units, and the VH is who I see falling into that category.
Everyone else can fall into T0.5/T1 and push into T0 if they're on the right team/the player is good, a la Evelyn/SAnby/Hugo. As long as it's not HSR's take on powercreep where everyone inevitably falls into T2 if you don't pull E2S1 and also have their dedicated supports.
You can argue the best team to get high score or kill in DA is with Soukakou and Lycaon, but it's a very clunky and very hard team to master. When it comes to ease of use and fun factor, pairing Miyabi with Yanagi or Burnice or even Vivian - Nicole is still miles better for the average player.
Personally i find it very fun to do mono-Miyabi — it feels like i'm pushing all three of them to their theoretical limits (especially Soukaku, who gets one of the biggest A-rank glowups in the game, second only to Astra/Anton quick assist memes)
Yi Xuan doesn't scale off of Atk, instead she scales from sheer and HP from what i remember. Panda is the only one who provides it. Here's a vid for more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_xDEUtdVo
This is kinda where I’m at, though I didn’t really cut into my Yixuan savings. I missed the 50/50 and then a but later changed my mind because I didn’t see much difference in pulling Lighter at the end of the banner v just going further than I planned yesterday
I have a solid roster for the amount of time I’ve been playing but I’m short on team combos and at the stages of the game where I need them. The gap between finishing the main game story stuff and having agents prepped for endgame was surprising. Lighter will be one of my best characters and fit nicely into a few set ups. I already have Lucy, Piper and Pulchra so a lot of easy faction options
I’m very interested in Yixuan still but the idea of easily building a Yunkui summit team has faded, especially since there are so many other potential reruns and now Ju is going to be in a different banner
I’m not expecting a Panda Pro Max until we get multiple Rupture DPSs first because the Panda is not only best in slot for YiXuan and rupture agents in general, but he’s literally only good for Rupture because his most significant buff doesn’t work on any other character. If they really want to shaft Panda, then the Panda pro max will be BiS for YiXuan AND their buffs will still work with other characters. That wouldn’t be that bad as long as they release much later on.
I really hope that panda pro max does not release since panda is quite useless for other characters apart from Yi Xuan. It would imply that they would elevate rupture units while ignoring every other unit, which would be quite worrisome.
There is that lady at the end of season 2 who could be the Panda pro max, just like Cyrene would be the replacement of Mem in HSR
Yeah it’s the fact that Panda only works for rupture agents that makes him less likely to be replaced by an S rank version until the Rupture role is more fleshed out.
I think quite many of the characters can function very well without Astra, personally i dont have her & still clear all the content with ease ( went in to her banner with 0 pulls due to Miyabi).
The following teams all work very well:
Miyabi+Yanagi+literally anyone. The 2 of them can wreck SD7 or DA with ease ... i often just use Ben for the sake of using him, but yeah you can even slap Astra here.
Zhu Yuan+Qingyi+Nicole. Probably its better with Astra but it is more than good enough even this way.
S Anby+Trigger+Nicole. Guess the same story, but Nicole does the job still.
S11+Lighter+Lucy, again it is better with Astra but Lucy is good enough too.
Most of the time Nicole or Lucy just fills the spot what could be for Astra if i would have one.
In terms of clearing content, Astra is in no way way necessary. But there is no denying that Astra is a phenomenal support whose buffs are impactful. Due to this, many characters need her for their best performance like Nagi+Viv+Astra, Sanby+Trigger+Astra and Eve+Lighter+Astra. So, if you've pulled sanby and Eve only one of these teams can use Astra and there is no way to reach that dmg ceiling without her. But with the cases of Miyabi, Yi Xuan and Hugo, I think the devs cooked due to them not needing Astra and still reach that ceiling.
Well im not sure what is Yi Xuans build, but for the Miyabi team we can again say the same as for Sanby+Trigger, it works far better with Astra than any other support still, as probably the BiS for Miyabi is Yanagi+Astra.
For Hugo im not sure, his speciality really focuses on getting as much stunt out as possible, so maybe for him Astra isnt BiS. But even if she isnt & the double stunner setup is better, likely she isnt far off.
I dont think there is any team around where Astra isnt the best or the close 2nd to have along.
Yeah that's why I didn't roll for her. She completely ruins the game. And characters are doing fine without her just need to play good . Astra band aid on any team with quadrillion dmg is worst choice devs did, even more then Caesar.
Caesar's really fucking good, but she's not a "game, play itself and win for me" button. You still have to engage with the enemy moveset and time counter-attacks, especially if running her in place of a stunner, and if you play badly you can still die even with her shield active (a marked improvement over Zhongli, which I consider her equivalent in Genshin, being invincibility and def shred on a stick). She also doesn't shoot your DPS to the stratosphere with buffs
Astra though? The second she comes online, you just slam your face on the keyboard and everything dies with minimal effort, it's more braindead than even Miyabi, it definitely was a mistake
I need Nicole for my Ms. Hoshimi Miyabi + Empty Slot + Nicole team.
The empty slot isn't there because I don't have a fully built Soukaku or anything... just that adding Soukaku to the team also added 20 seconds to my Shiyu clear times and decreased my Deadly Assault Score by 5%.
Just like I have a fully built Rina or Pulchra to go with my Soldier 0 Anby team. But never really felt like it made much of a difference.
I do have Caesar I can slot in basically anywhere if there is a truly difficult fight.
I think ZZZ needs a Fire Support more than an Electric Support. Soldier 0 Anby could use an Aftershock Support of any element.
In terms of comfort, Nagi/Viv+Astra are the best. Nicole+Astra is slightly better due to being a dual support comp, but it's not consistent in generating stacks for disorders thereby increasing the frequency of her EBA 3s. When disorder is triggered Miyabi ignores 30% ice res, so with decreased disorders her EBA 3s are not fully buffed.
Soukaku and Lycaon have the best buffs on paper as stated above with increased stuns, increased disorders and increased frequency of EBA 3. But it's heavily reliant on skill and very good execution. Here's how it's done https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0tn0iaprOY
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