A lot of players who have been using Zhongli for a while have no problems extolling his virtues as one of the most useful and strongest characters in the game.
- So far, Zhongli’s shield has taken the players who dared to pull him under his collective wing, sheltering them from every single harm that could possibly attack them in the Genshin world. And I mean everything; that shield has been harder to penetrate than a panzer tank would be to slingshots.
- Using Zhongli is a bit like becoming an invincible menace to your enemies. You take no damage, you can’t be knocked away, you can’t be stopped. You’re free to terrorize the baddies in Teyvat as much as you like; nobody is gonna break your stride or slow you down. It has made Zhongli a must-pull unit.
Until now, when there are enemies introduced in 2.4 that don’t seem to care about whether you’re shielded or not.
Beginning with the corrosion status, certain foes in Genshin, rather than dealing with you being practically a superhero, would rather inflict you with a poison-like status that quickly ticks away your health. A shield does nothing to stop this. The attack hits you anyway, the status is applied, and your health drains away like an unplugged faucet. Not even the CEO of Geo can stop it.
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If that weren’t bad enough, the newest boss of Enkanomiya, the Bathysmal Vishaps, can spit their attacks at you that straight up ignore the shield. It just goes right through it, smacking you for damage, shield, or no shield.
These sharks just don’t care about you or your archon. Where was this sharky duo during the Archon War; I’ll bet they’d be useful for whoever was fighting against archon Zhongli because apparently, it’s just that easy to go through the shields of a god.
And the upcoming version 2.5 may spell even more bad news for shields, with regular overworld, domain, and spiral abyss enemies having the same shield-ignoring traits as the sharks. If enemies all over the place can ignore shields, does that mean that having Zhongli is less valuable, or even not worth pulling moving forward?
Of course not.
From a game design standpoint, there is always going to be a certain amount of mechanics used that exist purely to counter the current dominating strategy. That’s true of most games, and the only question is whether those mechanics are balanced or overbearing.
So far, they seem balanced, with no real signs of imbalance being implemented in the future. Furthermore, this flavor-of-the-week anti-shield mechanic will almost certainly not be persisting throughout the entire game, so expect it to harass you in some newer areas, then dissipate as time goes on, and the meta shifts again.
This problem won’t stop Rex Lapis from dominating other areas, and it’s unlikely to affect him much in the future. Pull for Zhongli if you need him from the upcoming banner, he’s just that good.
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