ATWO was behind most of the men as well as Jane and Miyabi, who tourists love to use as examples. Honestly can’t say I’m sad to see him go, even though I liked a couple of his designs, and the tourists malding over it makes it so much better. Maybe they’ll finally quit
Got this comment in the WuWa subreddit after posting a comment about males not being for the target audience. And I think it's interesting, because it's tactic I see a lot, but it's pretty easy to break down its problems.
The general tactic is the "sympathetic male puller." Basically, "I just wish they'd release some more males from time to time. I don't think that's unreasonable, but everyone is so mean about it." Portraying themselves as asking for crumbs off the table and trying to put themselves in a sympathetic light. The problem with this is that it's obviously nonsense. Even if I was to give OP the benefit of the doubt (after I responded with a variation of what I'm putting below, they called me "insufferable" and refused to argue. So they do not deserve that benefit), their argument is deeply flawed.
The most obvious reason is that males fail. They just don't sell. And they'll come up with a million excuses as to why, but good, bad, right or wrong, it's the reality.
The game has finite resources. A male character inherently means resources not going to a female character or some other part of the game. It's not "they make five female characters or make five female and one male," it's "they make five female characters or make four female and one male." So acting like adding male characters is neutral for waifu pullers just isn't true.
"Savings." I never understand this idea, especially for how often it is parroted. Why would I want to save? I would rather there be too many characters I want than have skip patches. It’s a good problem to have when I want every banner character. This logic is basically "don't you want them to make less characters you like?" No? Obviously not? And the irony of this considering they're complaining about not having characters made for them but then immediately jumping around to "you should like there being less waifus."
And, of course, the "toxicity." Male pullers are easily the most toxic parts of these communities. If nothing else, all they do is whine about the lack of male characters, even when they get a male character. It's never enough, they always want more, and they will continue to complain no matter what. The game isn't for them, and they know that, and yet they continue to whine. All they bring is negativity, and then they wonder why we want to gatekeep them. And this is without even touching on something like fan service "discussions."
So, the moral of the story: don't fall for the "sympathetic male puller" routine. They might come across better than some others who are more brazenly toxic, but they are still tourists, they still want to ruin the game, and they still deserve to be judiciously gatekept. I know that doesn't really need to be said here, but it's still a good reminder.
Hi all! Stanley Lau (better know as Artgerm) is a comic book artist known for his work for Marvel and DC. Right now, he's hosting a poll for who he should draw in his Arttober series, where he draws a different character on each day of October, and Zhezhi made the list (after being submitted by yours truly)! You just have to put in an email to be able to vote, and you can vote for other characters as well. Artgerm himself will ultimately chose who he draws, but votes will factor into how he decides. I thought I'd bring the community's attention to this so we could vote and potentially see Zhezhi get chosen. This would mean both an awesome new piece of Zhezhi art and would bring more eyes to her character!
If you're interested in voting, here is the poll: https://www.raremarq.com/arttrober-poll
And in case you're unfamiliar with Artgerm, here are his socials: http://beacons.ai/artgerm
Also, just to clarify, I'm not in any way associated with him, just a big fan who would love to see him draw Zhezhi! And, although this goes without saying, please don't spam the poll or anything.
Finally got around to playing the 3.5 quest, and I was so excited to see my beautiful wife return (and for the first time in the main story)! That she's the first person to greet us in Jinzhou is just perfect. Even though it was just a minor cameo, it made me really happy
I have often lamented the lack of 1.x reruns, and when I have, I've had various forms of "they're not meta, they're powercrept and outdated, nobody will pull for them," etc. thrown at me. So here's the proof that I pulled for them, and I don't regret a thing. Pull screens as proof they were done today
Double soft pity for Changli and a loss to Jianxin, which is unfortunate (and I also forgot to screenshot her animation), but got Yinlin in a singular 10 pull, so it evened out. Very happy overall, and really excited to finally have them on my account. Also, Variation is rate-up on the weapon banner? I guess I'm pulling Zhezhi's weapon now (she's my favorite character).
Best of luck to everyone on their pulls, no matter who you're pulling (or how "powercrept" they are)!
Edit: title should say "nobody" not "nodody," stupid Reddit not letting you edit titles
I've never been able to figure out how to record ZZZ on my laptop, so I've just got this screenshot.
I love Caesar and Burnice, but I more and more rarely get to use them in endgame, so, since I accidentally pulled Velina, I decided to try this out figuring that Wind shill and Velina's inherent power would carry them. And I was right.
Burnice is M0W1. Velina is M0 on W5 Weeping Gemini, and she is only Core E. Caesar is M0 on W5 Peacekeeper - Specialized and an Anomaly-oriented build.
This team is so goofy to play since nobody wants to be on-field. I still have Burnice on Chaos Jazz, so she needs to be swapped out, Velina isn't great as an on-fielder, and Caesar functions as an off-field support. Despite that, it was fun to play, and I was proud to get this score. Definitely unoptimized, I'm admittedly not the best at the game, so someone who is better than me could definitely get higher, but still. Thought it might be fun to share.
Also, random thing but Burnice and Velina's Ultimates work so well together. If, during the start of Stun, I activate Burnice's Ultimate, swap to Velina and activate her Ultimate, Burnice's will run out just before Velina's so I can then Chain Attack into Burnice.
As a more general point, any off-meta teams you cleared this DA (or any others) with? Would love to hear. My favorite was clearing Thrall with M0W1 Evelyn/M0 Fufu on W3 Hellfire Gears/Caesar on this Anomaly build during an older DA. That team should realistically not have worked, but it did, and I was very happy about it.
Despite not really interacting with Battle Tower beyond getting the bit of polychrome before, I recently have had an itch to play more and have something to kind of zone out to, so I've started working my way up the Battle Tower. As of this writing, I just finished Floor 333 and thought it might be interesting to write up a few observations I've had.
The main teams I've been using are Angels, Fufu with either Yixuan and Lucia or Evelyn and Astra, and I have Caesar as a back-up. All have their sigs except Fufu, Lucia, and Caesar, and Astra is M1 (side note, does anyone know if M1W1 Astra better for Yixuan than M0W0 Lucia?). I started off mainly with Yixuan, but then I remembered the Angels all have their sigs so I switched to them as my primary team. This has generally covered me, since I have all three damage archetypes, and, at least that I've encountered, there are no enemies resistant to both Fire and Ether. Though in general, resistances and damage type don't seem to matter that much. There are specific examples, which I'll talk about more later, but in general it's fine.
Also, survivability doesn't really matter either, which was surprising. In an individual fight it may, as enemies do hit hard, but between all of these teams having healing capabilities and no damage runs being a kind of "standard," that's not really an issue. Caesar has not seen much use, though I keep her around just in case.
On the damage point, I find the scoring system annoying. You need to hit a certain threshold of points to get the badge for the stage, which I do care about getting, and a good chunk of points (30-40% of what you need) is locked behind whether you take damage. I rarely play the teams differently than I normally do, so that means the scoring largely comes down to those damage points. It will depend on the fight how much this does/does not matter; some it's totally fine to take damage, and others basically require no damage to get the badge. Most of my resets come from characters taking damage, and it gets rather frustrating.
Also, you really find out where characters' weaknesses are. Yixuan is often portrayed as being very I-frame heavy and easy to use, and this is true generally, but I have found out that, even when pressing the EX Special button, her combo can be interrupted. If you switch to a different character, she can also still end up taking damage. This is the most interesting case I've noticed of this, but it holds true more generally. I'm often taking damage in unexpected ways. Side note, I swear Yixuan's EX parry is easier to hit Battle Tower than it is in DA and Shiyu.
Probably to no one's surprise, it gets repetitive pretty quickly. There are a finite amount of enemies in the game, but even then it feels like it largely takes from a subset of them, particularly more recent enemies. I do think some more variety would be nice, particularly using older enemies, but it's ultimately fairly whatever.
DA bosses can show up, which I was a bit surprised by. In what I've encountered so far, it's been Thrall, Sarah, Vesper, and Sweeper. Defiler might also have been there, but I'm not totally sure. What's more interesting than just their inclusion is that they're largely the same mechanically, so they want you to bring in the same teams you'd use in DA i.e. Vesper and Sweeper want the Angels. It's not as restrictive as time is less of a factor, but it definitely still affects the experience of play.
Thrall is horrible in this mode. I don't know if it's just my teams or what, but Sobek will not die. I'm talking like two minutes of fighting him, multiple big Ults with Yixuan, and it barely dents him. Same thing with Evelyn, and Angels are useless against him since Sobek doesn't have an Anomaly bar. Easily my second most dreaded fight.
My most dreaded is Jane. I despise Jane since she's even harder than normal. Doesn't help that she's Ether resistant, which makes her even more annoying with my teams. Thankfully points-wise it's fine if you take damage with her, otherwise I don't think I would be getting all the badges.
That's just kind of a grab bag of thoughts after playing through a good chunk of it. Would love to hear others' thoughts, especially if you've played Tower a lot since I'm still relatively new.
"W—Welcome! Thanks for coming to our Angels of Delusion's... 'One-Day Pop Up' event!"
"Oh! It's you, Burnice!"
"Little~ Sunna~"
"I knew I had to come to the city for my birthday! Photos with cute little idols — here I come!"
"...W—Wait! Let me get my expression right!"
"—Three, two, one... Happy birthday!"