Why NO ONE Plays: Trailblazer (Physical/Destruction) | Honkai: Star Rail

gacha games tend to be notorious for the tutorial characters AKA starting units to lag behind and power sooner than later as a means of incentivizing players to make use of the gacha system to pull for more units namely the higher tiered ones it's sort of the opposite to the likes of Pokémon while the overall intent behind both is to amass as big of a collection of playable characters as possible for the former it's presumably encouraged for you to keep your starter with you at all times no matter how often you switch out the other five party members as a lifelong partner so to speak it's the opposite for the latter there are exceptions but from the many watches I played in my time view if any of them expect you to keep your initial roster in fact said roster tends to get power creeped practically after the first couple months of the game's timeline and that is where we find our main character for honai staro curiously though Trail bl's story doesn't quite follow the same format as that of its predecessor most of you have likely seen my w no one place episode for ather and lumine collectively referred to as the traveler and while they have had recent success with pent variant following the release of that video all expectations for improvement vanished with their hydroid duration so it's safe to say that people still consider traveler a second rate unit kylo and stell's situation is identical in some ways but different in others you may notice on the thumbnail the great text in the physical icon implying I'm referring to just one version of The Traveler this episode of Vino and place will be somewhat different in that while I will be going over the issues of the character I'll also be talking about how my theory is that it was actually intended to be this way given what we know about their other version and what we can speculate will happen going forward I think the first thing we should do is lay out the differences and characteristics between kyus and stealth and Dather and lumine both are designed to be self-inserts allowing the players some sus of choice in how they want to conduct their behavior and while this can allow for some very fun interactions every now and then usually the traveler and Trailblazer have a more subdued muted personality so as to make them as agnostic as possible a property Shar between them is their ability to quote unquote transform giving the player freedom and how they want to play them which aligns with the motif of the MC serving as a depiction of you for instance in gain the traveler is currently able to assimilate five of The Seven Elements gaining new abilities corresponding to each one place ather and the meain serve to introduce you to the central theme of the element in question animal being about Elemental absorption and crowd control Geo being about constructs Electro being about battery dentro being about reaction combinations and hydro being complete dog and hydro being about HP scaling and using health itself as an offensive resource while there are functionally unique play styles for each element traveler generally takes a more supportive or offield DPS Focus role for the majority of them ginin doesn't have an established class system the way staro does it's based on roles like onfield Felder all Fielder support driver Etc there's more emphasis placed on elements on the other hand character diversification in Stell is predicated on classes more than elements although there's still some inome of that as a result the trail blaz is more nuanced in differentiation between one version to the next and is primarily the reason why I'm making this why no and Place episode specifically on physical Trail Placer as I have a greater reason to believe that kyus and stealth will evolve to be more useful as time goes on in addition to the Trailblazers receiving a new element upon transformation they also receive A New Path designation and subsequently a drastically different play style physical Trailblazer aderes to the destruction path serving as an all-purpose damage dealer equipped to handle any cat scenario appropriate for introducing players to the facets of starl combat fire Trailblazer on the other hand is of the preservation path not just gting a new weapon in the form of a humongous Burning Spear by completely altering the role to now serve as an aggro tank still dealing a fair bit of damage but mainly serving as a protector not an attack there's a notable diversion in play style from physical to Fire and with the number of paths equaling the number of elements it's safe to assume that with each new element Comes A New Path as well hypothetically speaking we can have an imaginary Harmony Trailblazer a Quantum abundance lighning hunt when their Edition Etc the fire Trail Blazer has more potential for usage now and they will later at present they're a fairly competitive option due to having consistent AOE damage and more unique utility as opposed to traditional tanks like fuen and chapar they're not top tier by any means but I don't think it would be right to include both versions of Trailblazer in this discussion that brings us to physical Trailblazer the default version of kyus still and the first one you get in typical gacha MC fashion you're lucky to find anyone who's at the end game who still uses them unlike our last episode where arand had a distinct Niche that was kneecapped by poor design and Nerfs from the beta Trailblazer is defined by the absence of any Niche whatsoever in fact while destruction is known for being the general combat DPS path almost everyone within excels at a specific field Blade's all about HP scill and clar is about aggro and counter tanking Hook is damage over time arens about low HP lunai hungs about SP loading about ignoring weaknesses so on and so forth Trailblazer on the other hand's kind of all over the place I'll remind you that this is good to have on a starting unit so as to be usable for all facets of combat but it doesn't do any favors for longevity their very blind nature makes it hard for them to particularly excel in anything whether practically or thematically jack of all trades damage dealers are in my opinion the worst kind of archetype in terms of value you can have allpurpose supports like Ren May and tun as their backstage peasants allows them to work towards a multitude of parties and characters the damage dealer however is the Primadonna therefore the star of the show fall short no amount of Backstage presence can bail them out as we've seen for the previous two episodes it's here that we encountered the first problem with physical Trailblazer they're trying to do too much spreading their power budget too thin resulting them in being an unexceptional choice for pretty much any role contrary to yaning and Arin who take too much effort to reach their Peak Performance Trailblazer couldn't be easier to play their ultimate simply lets you perform a stronger version of their basic attack or skill both of which consist of straightforward attacks to enemies their talent grants a bonus attack buff that lasts for the entirety of battle whenever they inflict weakness break on enemies demanding a bit more tact as you want to achieve weakness breaks with them and not someone else by accident but that's an elementary task for most in light of the game's turn-based nature affording you plenty of time and planning moves out even in the midst of a fight not to mention their E6 adds an easier way you can stack up the talent apart from that the rest of their traces are also pedestrian A2 gives energy at the start of a battle giving more uses of their ultimate A4 allows their talent to give bonus defense alongside bonus attack and A6 is just more damage to the primary target of the base and empowered version of this skill extremely self-explanatory and one of the easiest characters in the game to play how this works against them is that they were essentially designed to be played solo as stated before with them being spread to thin across multiple things when looking at other damage dealers you'll find almost all aspects of their kit are dedicated to increasing damage whether bonus energy for more Al spam bonus damage more crit what have you physical Trail blaz there's a few of those as well but the amount of extraneous material in their repertoire is higher than that of their pierce the technique is a small heal for the entire team quite useful in the early game when you probably don't have have access to a strong healer until well to the aurilla 6 quest line where you get Natasha it's a good overall boost to have for those unwilling to backtrack to a space ancher to restore help therefore grants bonus defense good for survival but unconducive to DPS as physical Trailblazer has no defense scaling in their kit finally given Idol are freely accessible for the MC there's E2 granting honest sustain when attacking enemies with a physical weakness again these traits are good to have especially in the early game before plays have enough characters but you lose out on what could have been DPS productive traces and idolan in exchange for them putting it bluntly physical Trailblazer falls off significantly in damage as you progress towards the mental aame even using Arland for comparison which isn't exactly the most ideal point of reference to begin with frenzy punishment deals 320% of Rank 10 to the main enemy which is just shy of Trail blazes 3375 if we include A6 however while Trail Blazer's only damage amp comes in the form of up to a 40% attack boost arland's DPS amp comes in the form of General damage and up to 72% at that giving him a greater ceiling albeit with very high maintenance Trailblazer scaling is just is not up to par since there really isn't any scaling in their kit apart from base damage this means what you see is what you get and what you get doesn't lend itself to being considered a high value character another physical damage is suan who bile caps is not the most impressive unit either but if you take a look at her move set there's a lot of room for investment in her for instance giving suang more battery not only enables her to use more ultimates but she gets to boost her skill damage as well thanks to having two more chances to trigger the bonus damage Trailblazer has nothing but the 40% attack boost absolutely nothing there's no multiplicative or exponential scaling in their kit increasing their speed will net you just a one to one benefit increasing ultimate usage is again just a one to one benefit whereas for some units increasing speed can imply faster stacking or increasing ultimate usage gives more up time unless you forget they have better rade scaling to begin with it's not like they can Moonlight as another role either since none of the utility Centric skills are substantial enough to adequately deliver on the role in question sure the technique lets them heal their party but you can't call them A Healer as that's only in the overw world wherein you can simply make use of healing consumables for the same outcome you can't call them a tanky even with the onhand regen and the bonus defense as they have no way to draw aggro or distribute that defense to the team if say the E2 Regen appli to the whole team then maybe they could double as a Healer but that's a man-sized maybe in other words the party will receive no benefit from those utility skills this jack of all trades master of non-play styles also it gives players no reason to use them over other choices who can outperform them in that specific field starl combat the endgame combat anyway can get very specific if not imposed by the game itself then the play style you Endeavor to choose for that run memory of of chaos is a standard Gauntlet of fights either with isolated enemies or groups of them initially this would seem favorable to Trailblazer as they're built to handle any situation in theory which is true and applicable here until you realize the memory turbulence always has something that favors DPS units in some way shape or form for example the mlc buff for a cycle could be bonus damage over time bonus followup attack damage bonus damage for every point of spu bonus break damage Etc you'll find that virtually every other unit in the game can make more efficient use of those Buffs than Trailblazers since they only ever receive a portion of the maximum benefit that could be received due to not having a fully dedicated move set pure fiction is more or less the same being a destruction unit with blast attacks they're not the worst out there but now they're competing for market share against both members of their path and their addition units things might seem a bit different in gamess like swarm disaster and golden gears where you can essentially make your own path but once again blessings path resonance curios and stuff will almost certainly benefit other units to a greater extent and Trailblazer because their lack of a clear Niche further exacerbating their standing is that they essentially have to compete against all three DPS packs in general hunt units are only expected to compete with other hunt units it's not right or reasonable for a Hunt character to be compared with an air Edition as hunt units aren't supposed to be meant for AOE attacks and vice versa with Trailblazer lacking a distinct play style and being a destruction unit that automatically means they're going to be evaluated against the entire roster and get destroyed by the entire roster they do have a strong single target attack with their ultimate in power normal but at that point you might as well play Dr ratio they do have a strong AOE attack with their ultimate empowered skill but why do that when there's Hera acaron Clara himo jinguan arti lunai Dan hung Jingo Kafka the personification of gambling addiction of self need I say more there's ultimately no reason to use them in anything they're never going to be as good as another choice but the single biggest reason why I think they're not played now nor will they ever be ironically has to do with the Trailblazer themselves I mentioned in the beginning that on top of receiving a new element Trailblazer receives A New Path destination fundamentally altering their play style and the purpose they serve for the team though you're allowed to remotely choose which version you want be simply by accessing their character tab a feature we've been dying for Miho to give to kin's traveler you can never have both versions of Trailblazer simultaneously unlike physical Trailblazer fire Trailblazer actually has a niche Agro tanking giving you more of a reason to stay on fire if and when you need them as they acquire new Pats and elements there will be even more consideration for opportunity cost even if there is a scenario where you could see a reason to use physical Trailblazer you could probably construct a team around say imaginary Harmony Trailblazer or ier Edition Trailblazer and that team is almost guaranteed to perform whatever you could possibly come up with for a physical Trailblazer but actually I think that was intended right from the start in contrast to ather and lumine who basically changed what color shirt they want to wear based on whichever element they feel like corresponding to in my eyes Trail story feels more like a progression or a cultivation after being impaled by kolia you go through that cut scene with cop bestowing upon you the path of preservation and rejoining the fight with the new Burning L that's the distinction between the two while in kenina feels like a the means simply changed their power in starl kyus and stelle absorb new power adding into them M themselves it makes perfect sense why fire Trailblazer is stronger and more practical than physical Trailblazer because it's two paths versus one it's not a transformation it's an evolution you're not switching Powers you're stockpiling power kind of like the one forall Quirk from mha I guess I like to clarify that I'm not lot many are more qualified than I am at this but that to me is the theory behind why physical Trailblazer is so weak that's their basist form their level one as they acquire more pets they'll get stronger to where eventually they become like the Avatar and have control over all pets and destroy everything I like to that's the case maybe starl has an actual sense of progression for the MC starting them out weak but making them stronger and stronger as time goes on unlike ather and lumine who hav't established past and stuff the Trailblazer has no past no memory of it anyway there for all intents and purposes the same as March 7th where it's a brand new Journey for them there's no goal of trying to find their long lost sibling to go back to what they were doing they're a blank slate there's no going back there's only going forward all right I'm getting too deep into this you're here for gameplay discussion. lore the longest short of it is physical Trailblazer is generic to a fault they have no Niche which makes it basically impossible to find a place in the meta and the likelihood of future Trailblazer versions having more staying power is extremely high given the differences in how they're going about starl MC and genin MC but what do you guys think do you believe I'm underselling them or do you agree with my points you're welcome to share your thoughts in the comments down below for now if you enjoy the video it would be great if you could leave a like And subscribe consider following me on Twitter at vars joining my Discord server and checking out my other Y no one play videos if you haven't yet but until next time thanks so much for watching and I love look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music]

Channel: Vars II

Views: 104,203

Keywords: honkai star rail, hsr, star rail, hsr 2.2, honkai star rail 2.2, imaginary trailblazer, harmony trailblazer, why no one plays, hsr why no one plays, honkai star rail why no one plays, why no one plays trailblazer, destruction trailblazer, physical trailblazer, why no one plays honkai star rail, vars why no one plays, vars honkai star rail, hsr trailblazer, trailblazer, is honkai star rail good

Id: XJtYEX3awAw

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024