THE PROBLEM WITH 5-STAR CHARACTERS AND WEAPONS | GENSHIN IMPACT

THE PROBLEM WITH 5-STAR CHARACTERS AND WEAPONS | GENSHIN IMPACT

There’s a few things you need to know about the 5-star characters and weapons and this tutorial is going to address the current situation in Genshin Impact. Even though the topic of a 5-star weapon rarely comes up as the main discussion point, now would be the time to address some of the things surrounding these banners that usually aren’t considered as exciting as something you would expect from a new character. 

And the first thing that’s important to admit is that the power of a 5-star weapon is truly impressive and you can’t help but agree a lot of them feel very iconic and work as a great tool to showcase your bragging rights as you would otherwise use cosmetic stuff like alternative costumes which are yet to come out. And as we keep playing through newly released updates and our roster of characters keep on getting better and stronger, if you’re like many other players who have mostly summoned from the featured character banner, there’s actually a point in your progression where it makes more sense, logically speaking, to go for a 5-star weapon instead of a 5-star character, however, there are major caveats that need to be addressed before you decide if your primo gems are worth spending.

 Now as previously mentioned, a 5-star weapon in nearly every case is going to be superior compared to a 4-star weapon and that’s mainly thanks to its higher base ATK and the passive power it brings along with it. There are of course some cases where the improvements aren't that big when comparing the weapons of two rarities but for the most part – there’s very little chance you will be losing out if you equip your character with a 5-star weapon. 

And what’s actually amazing for someone who is an end-game player is that the weapons don’t require that many resources to max them out since the only thing that needs resin are the ascension materials which you can farm up pretty fast and the rest of them can be obtained from world exploration. And it actually used to be worse when CrystalOres had a longer respawn cooldown but now you can pretty much farm a lot of it and even go into someone else’s world for even more ores with the only problem being that the blacksmith only crafts a certain amount of experience before it will need to refresh on the next server reset. 

So in terms of acquiring and using a 5-star weapon from the get-go isn’t the biggest consideration that you need to take into and the real focus here is the probability that gets disclosed on the featured weapon banners. And unlike with your regular featured character, there’s always 2 weapons you see and you’re essentially doing a coin flip without any guarantees you will actually obtain the weapon you want which can end up as a disappointing experience for many and whether this will be addressed by miHoYo is unknown, however, for the time being, 

it is highly advised to only go after a weapon banner if you think any of the 2 weapons will be useful for you but keep in mind you can still even end up with an entirely different weapon, just like in the recent case this account had where summoning for Staff of Homa ended up as Aquila Favonia, which ironically is a very welcome addition since there were no 5-star swords in the collection. 

So the main takeaway here is that a 5-star weapon for end-game players is actually a very good investment when speaking logically but because we all love and enjoy using a new character and discovering things about them, a weapon banner is basically designed for those who are truly seeking to power up their team but because there isn’t any content that requires you to have these strong weapons, you shouldn’t feel the pressure to summon for the weapon, no matter how good it is. 

After 3 major updates, those of us who have started out since the game’s launch and even many others who are now done with building their teams and looking for new options, a 5-star character for the most part is an exciting opportunity to change up our daily routines because once a major update drops, if you actively play the game you’re going to run out of new content within few days or even less. 

This leaves us with our daily commissions, weekly bosses or bounties and then finally battle pass missions, all of which are done while keeping a close eye on our resin refresh rate. And the current challenge right now is that raising a new character can take weeks if not months and this is without taking into consideration for when you want to fully max out their talents and this has been the case with 

Razor who has been one of the main ones that were used actively in Spiral Abyss and other challenging content and even after playing the game since its launch, there’s still2 levels missing to fully max out his talents. And of course, this is one of the more extreme examples that’s plagued by uncertain drop rates from the weekly bosses. And the reason why this heavy investment cost gets mentioned is mainly due to the fact that a lot of end-game players are starting to take interest into weapon banners since this becomes especially relevant if you don’t own at least 1 of each weapon type which isn’t mandatory but on the other hand, 

it’s also a nice thing to have since you’re almost certain it will be the best thing to put on your main damage dealer or even support damage dealer. Still, it’s important to keep in mind that the majority of the player base are either free-to-play or light to mid-spenders and it always feels like it makes more sense to go after a new character because you can at least save up a certain amount of primo gems to trigger the guaranteed pity summon. But the main problem here is that while anew character is exciting, it’s important to remember that for the most part, the majority of power lies in artifacts. 

And of course, there are outliers like Ventior Ganyu that are just in a league of their own but even without them, you can pretty much secure yourself in a very comfortable position as long as you can raise and equip a character from each different element and once you’re done with that, you’re going to be smooth sailing after wards since the biggest challenge that usually doesn’t even involve damage are the shields you need to break in time-sensitive content like the Spiral Abyss. 

And that’s the thing – you can pretty much use any team composition you want when exploring the world or doing most of the domains that don’t have a timer so there shouldn’t be any pressure to summon other than emotional attachment or the exciting dopamine rush you get when trying to obtain that new and shiny character. So in essence – a new character is always going to be a heavy investment if you want to make them on par with everyone else in your party, unless you go for a cheap support approach, which can work with some characters like Bennett or Qiqi. 

But still, this means if you’re looking for an extra power that doesn’t involve a new character and you don’t have a 5-star weapon yet or at least not from a certain type, it could actually be beneficial, although not as fun or interesting when compared to a new character instead. Which brings us to the final and most crucial point. No matter how many strong 5-star weapons or characters you obtain, the reality of the situation is that the game doesn’t provide major rewards for major accomplishments. 

And you could have a debate whether this is a good or bad design but the current situation suggests that you can easily play this game casually and stay away from most traps or mistakes and you would still end up getting everything that someone who spends thousands of dollars onto the very same game. And of course, the biggest difference between the two would be how soon enough can you start reaping all the benefits but even then, things like Theater Mechanic us don’t even care about your character’s level or artifacts and the event side-quests scale with your world. 

Not to mention you can always invite over someone who is stronger than you for when you’re in need of help. And probably the best example that has shownmiHoYo’s current approach to dedicated end-game players was the Hypostatic Symphony event where it was truly one of the most challenging things the game had going and it required you to have multiple teams of characters raised and good equipment as well, if you wanted to clear the boss fight with all challenges selected. 

But then we saw that you could get all the rewards without beating these bosses with all their challenges selected and even better– you could go on a co-op together and take advantage of other players who had stronger character than yours. So at this point, we were able to witness the most challenging content and its reward structure and it now begs the questions whether it's worth speculating by going after 5-star weapon banners since even if they provide a major boost in power, the reality is, you can still achieve amazing results without these weapons even if it’s going to take a bit longer. 

But to quickly summarize, going after a featured weapon banner is only recommended if you’re willing to accept either of them not to mention the random chance of actually getting a different weapon altogether which means the best time if you want to get a 5-star weapon would be when you don’t even have any of them or are missing one of the types. It’s also important to admit that raising a weapon you just got is far more easier than it is with a new character and it will most likely beef up your overall team performance as a guarantee. 

But then we have the focus on a 5-star character which can be extremely useful when you’re still in the process of building at least a character from each element and trying to finish 2 teams for the Spiral Abyss but once you're past that, the diminishing returns will set in and the only way you can improve your team is by finding new and powerful synergies with characters that could be new or simply different. 

Finally, no matter how much many refinements or constellations you will pursue, the end-game content currently has a ceiling where after reaching it you no longer are at a risk of missing out on most rewards, and even if you do, they aren’t the most game-changing as luckily things like Crowns of Insight are easily accessible by everyone. 

And most importantly – please make sure to exercise caution when summoning on any banners, especially the ones where weapons are featured because miHoYo so far has allowed us to play together with others who can help us out if we’re still struggling and the reward structure has been mostly fair to everyone who is at least in mid-game. 

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