Physical Damage: Are They Viable Without Elements? | Genshin Impact

i've spent a lot of time discussing the six playable elements in genji and during that time i've gotten so many comments asking me to discuss characters who don't use any of them or at least not for the main gameplay damage calculation in this game is much easier to understand while others may have a lot of crazy formulas to determine your damage output the entrance is simpler to start you have your attack then talent damage then damage bonus so hypothetically let's say you have 1000 attack and then you have a talent that does 300 damage and assuming the character is pyro you have a 50 pyro damage bonus that means you'll be doing 3 000 times 1.5 which is 4 500 and then if you land a critical hit it's just that times the bonus crit damage so if you have 100 crit damage that 4 500 doubles to 9 000 afterwards you factor in things like the target's defense and resistance before wrapping it up with the boost from amplifying elemental reactions like melt vaporize etc transformative reactions have their own formula it's this very reason why elemental reactions are the focal point of ganshin's combat it's the very last metric added to damage calculation which is how you have units like kutao or a child doing big booty numbers with their ultimates it's why the pyro element is heavily utilized for its ability to trigger melt and vaporize in conjunction with cryo and hydro respectively and also why electro has been widely considered the weaker of the two quote unquote offensive elements as overloaded super conduct and electrocharge were valued less due to not multiplying damage that said reactions are notorious for missing timing you have to layer the correct combination or sometimes permutations of elements for maximum efficiency owner is to achieve dependably when there's so much going on during a fight as the nation do this while the number of characters are still few and far between there exists a subgroup of dps units who don't even use an element for the main source of damage instead of chaining elemental reactions together these characters lean on the side of raw force allowing them to be much more consistent from a conceptual standpoint their existence within the game raises a lot of interesting questions is it possible to make viable units who aren't beholden to the elemental system what are the inherent weaknesses physical units have to deal with that elemental ones don't and vice versa what are some benefits to physical damage over elemental we're going to explore all that and more today to start who are the physical damage dealers it's not exactly an official thing technically speaking anyone can be a physical damage dealer as everyone does physical damage well besides catalyst users of course early on in the game's release kuching means entertained the idea of using a physical damage build and it wasn't half bad all things considered i did actually try it myself you can proc her lightning stiletto with a charge attack to bypass thundering penis's electro infusion then of course there's the machine gun visual build where you go for pure physical damage although some characters are implicitly designed with physical damage in mind if memory serves there are three razer shinyan and yula if there's more i'm sure the comments section will be filled with people screaming at me for not including it i know gene does have the option to go physical damage but in all seriousness hardly anyone uses her as their main carry anyways let's move on as mentioned before physical damage is one of the eight damage types in the game the other seven being elemental swords claymores polars and normal attacks from bows deal physical damage by default and there's quite a good number of weapons that grant large physical damage bonuses like song of broken pines aquila favonia and compound bone dragon spine spear the latter two boasting a staggering 69 at max refinement easily the highest damage bonus out of any weapon full stop now there aren't any elemental reactions that directly utilize physical damage but there are two that interact with it thereafter the first is frozen's follow-up reaction shatter which deals physical damage whenever a frozen enemy is struck by a heavy attack plunging attack geo damage explosions or attacks from claymores the damage is purely determined by elemental mastery though so it doesn't happen to your physical damage bonuses or attack in any way the second and most notable one is superconduct when electro and cryo are mingled together it deals cryo damage in a wide area that reduces the physical resistance of all enemies hit by forty percent for twelve seconds that translates to sixty six point six seven percent bonus physical damage unless you have registered vendors four piece set bonus elemental resistant shreds don't come anywhere close to that amount then again considering they don't have the added benefits of elemental reactions beyond that that kind of amplification is very much needed as for the characters gameplay-wise there's no such thing as a character with no element yes yes i know during that one tournament beta hosted aether and lumine were temporarily made elementless but edge cases aside every playable unit has an element so what determines if their physical damage deal is in the first place easy way to tell is by looking at their skill and burst razer might come off as a surprise though in that regard claw and thunder and lightning fang are both centered around electro damage but what makes him a physical damage dealer is his ascension stat he's the only one who gains physical damage combine this with the boss attack speed from his and then incentivize him to hack you to pieces with physical damage as for yula and xinyon their elemental bursts are physically oriented eula's glacial illumination opens up with cryo damage but the aftershock from her lightfall swords deals explosive amounts of physical damage she has the opposite her initial strike is physical but the ensuing burnout is pyro with all that said what exactly motivates them to build physical damage over whatever their respective element is after all there's still a traits of elemental damage in each of their kits there are a few pros to their name the first is that physical damage like i said earlier is very consistent though you're barred from accessing reactions it means you don't have to deal with insect internal cool down mist timings and the like all you're required to do is activate superconduct and fortunately two out of the three physical units already meet half the equation so there you go think about it like this the performance range of someone like is 70 to 150 percent if played poorly she doesn't do a whole lot compared to others but with good execution she's an absolute monster on the other hand eula's performance range is more like 90 to 130 percent theoretically she may not reach his high's utau but she doesn't fall as low either then again i'm sure by now everyone has seen that one clip where eula did over 5 million damage so perhaps the validity of that statement is up for debate the second is that physical damage naturally disregards type advantages and disadvantages so they're able to be fielded more or less unconditionally if you so choose there is no shortage of enemies that are heavily resistant to certain elements obviously you won't be able to make use of ganyu or ayaka very effectively against the cryo abyss niche stuff like that but this does mean you won't counter any element either it's completely neutral most of the time the third physical damage is easily accessible in this game there are two artifact sets that grant you 25 bonus damage for the two-piece set effect pale flame and bloodstained chivalry unless we forget the myriad of weapons that provide physical damage in many cases it's easier to gear them up than an elemental unit who usually demands a four piece bonus you also don't have to worry about stats like elemental mastery likewise physical damage is not without drawbacks the most notable one is that they're excluded from very useful and very powerful elemental reactions depending on how the game develops moving forward there might be new mechanics added or changes to existing ones that further widen the gap between elements and if the unit in question doesn't have attributes that make up for the deficit they'll be vastly overshadowed by peers who are able to utilize reactions in many ways i like to akin physical units to rockley from the anime naruto right at the gate it was established that his talent for ninjutsu and genjutsu was virtually non-existent and so he was forced to bet all his shifts in taijutsu during his battle against gara in the tuning exams he basically had to go super saiyan just to match him in his defense gara was literally the worst opponent he could have gone up against if he went up against any of the other shinobi lee could easily take all of the mon at once by himself and win but it goes to show you that there are certain limitations you just can't get over no matter how strong or how fast he tries to be lack of ninjutsu and genjutsu will forever suppress the limits of his fighting capabilities and before you say my guy almost 1v1 madra by that point the story had gotten so powercraft guy was ripping mountains to pieces and remember the eight inner gates can be opened by anyone the fact that he has to tap into the eight gates means that base form guy is not as good as everyone thinks he is if kakashi had the eight gates he would mark him so fast anyways done with that reference at the present moment eula is the only viable pure physical damage dealer razer has long faded from viability and xi'an was never even viable to begin with no offense to her here's the problem yula is broken she has some of the strongest constellations in the game title illusion grants her thirty percent bonus physical damage essentially for free ladies c phone cuts ice tight vortex's hold cool down from 10 seconds to 4. an obstinacy of one's inferiors is another 25 damage bonus on her lightfall swords against enemies below half health these are phenomenal damage amps to have on her and let's look at our glacial illumination for 7 seconds after cast she charges up a lightfall sword with each attack if used at full power the aftershock does over 6500 damage far exceeding that of any other unit's elemental burst even shogun's muscle shinsetsu at max decks thing is she needs to be able to do that much damage to be relevant if she had the same normal numbers then she would be one of the worst five stars in the game by extension physical damage as a whole has inflated scaling the two piece bonuses from pale flame and blasting chivalry gives 25 physical damage 10 more than the elemental artifacts 15 that applies to everything physical related you may notice that there are no weapons in the game that provide elemental damage boosts it's only physical if there was a sword that gave 20 pyro damage or a catalyst that gave 20 hydro damage it would be way more consequential than 20 physical damage on account of further amplification from reactions it's done so intentionally in that way to close the gap but what this means is that if gangshin wants to release good physical damage units they would have to make them so much stronger in numbers and whatnot you can't balance them in the same way you would balance a pyro cryo electro units so on and so forth another issue with physical damage pertains to superconduct it's effectively obligatory for any physical unit to be successful this doesn't bode well for future releases because a physical damage team needs to have an electro and cryo unit no matter what unless hoyovers plans to make every physical damage dealer either electro or cryo any pyro animal geo hydro or potentially dendrophysical units have to delegate two party slots to achieve superconduct leaving them with just one remaining fielding specific elements wouldn't ordinarily be an issue if it were other ones like hydro or pyro given that more often than not you want to have those elements on your team regardless but both cryo and electro aren't the most fantastic when it comes to general support at least not in normal sense it's not all purpose like bennett's massive attack boost jonly's face tangible shield and kazuha's all-around good combination of stuff so having to waste two slots just for an elemental reaction is a price too high to pay most of the time those are the two biggest detrimental aspects to physical damage dealers they don't fit into the game traditionally speaking mind you ganchin is all about mixing and matching elements i'm not saying physical units have to have equal representation but it's an interesting case study to say the least the fact that you can probably get like over 150 bonus physical damage shred physical resistance like crazy and have ridiculously high scaling on someone like eula and still not be the best unit in the game only demonstrates the significance of elements in kenshin impact would a hydro or animal physical unit need to have the same over-inflated numbers to remain competitive with everyone else that is something to take into consideration by the developers all the same addressing these concerns is trivial to less than the physical units over reliance on superconduct they can simply add another reaction that breaks physical resistance by 40 easy fix physical damage's lack of synergy with reactions is already more or less handled by augments being more accessible and giving higher ratios if we ignore the need for an electro and cryo unit it's pretty easy to design supports that help out with physical damage one of xinya's passive talents grants 15 bonus physical damage to anyone shielded by her sweeping fervor and the damage component of her skill breaks physical resistance by 15 as well if you have c4 it's just right now there's not enough of them so the physical damage category is largely underdeveloped we could revisit this topic maybe sometime next year to see if things are different for now though i think it would be prudent for hoyovers to leave the door open eula is a good start she is in everyone's cup of tea but for those who do enjoy her gameplay she's every bit the fighter that elemental ones are before we wrap things up something i think is important to make note of razer xinyan and yula are all great sword users which makes you wonder if the current landscape for physical dps would change in any way if we had a true physical sword or pole arm or a bow user official does have a worthwhile physical build but i mean like dedicated physical as in the talents do physical damage moreover i wonder if there could be room for exploration in hybrid scaling geo is widely known as the defense scaling element and to be honest when i saw ito i thought he was going to be a physical damage dealer xinyon may not be geo but she does have partial hyperscaling in defense this opens up the possibility that we can have physical dps units who scale off of defense as well so they can be strong in damage and durability good for scenarios where enemies dish out a lot of damage alternatively we can make physical units tank busters if by chance we start seeing enemies with really high defense there might be physical units who can cut defense down you know like razorsport constellation food for thought the thing about genshin that makes me love and hate it so much at the same time is that it has a very strong foundation the game has so much potential there's so much they can do but it makes it all the more frustrating when hoyovers is not going to town on that potential like physical damage a lot of aspects of this game feel superficial and i wish they did more with each update than what they do now for all we know it might take years before no physical damage units are released to make it a worthwhile archetype to invest in but what are your guys's thoughts on physical damage do you think physical damage should be expanded on a lot more or do you think the game should maintain focus on elements let me know in the comments down below and for those who do want to see more physical units what do you think is the best way to increase their viability we're going to end it off here though so if you enjoyed the video please be sure to leave a like and subscribe consider following me on twitter joining my discord server and if you still have time feel free to check out my discussion on how i would fix electro for now thank you all so much for watching and i'll see you again soon for the next one take care [Music] you

Channel: Vars II

Views: 258,512

Keywords: genshin impact, genshin impact guide, genshin, genshin impact game, genshin impact gameplay, genshin razor, genshin eula, genshin xinyan, keqing physical dps, genshin physical dps, genshin physical, genshin elements, vars genshin impact, why no one plays razor, why no one plays xinyan, genshin impact discussion, genshin impact physical damage, genshin dps, genshin impact version 2.6

Id: NOYYP3J4X1o

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022