I don’t hate Columbina as a character, I hate how restrictive she is
I skipped almost the entire Nod-Krai patch cycle because I genuinely hated how restrictive everything felt. Flins needing Ineffa, Nefer basically locked behind Lauma… it just felt bad. On top of that, I was never a fan of this whole “lunar-charged” mechanic. Maybe part of that is because I didn’t pull a single character that actually uses it, so the entire system just felt irrelevant to my account.
Because of all that, I decided to focus on the Hexerie side of things and skipped everything with Columbina in mind. I waited months for her. Literally months. And now she’s here… only to turn out just as restrictive as the units I skipped in the first place.
That alone would’ve been frustrating, but to make it worse, I lost the 50/50 on her banner back to back, both times at around 85 pity. After saving and waiting that long, that just felt brutal. It really adds to the feeling that I put in all this patience and planning only to get punished for it.
I passed on multiple characters specifically so I could invest fully into Columbina, and now I’m being told she’s only really “usable” with like four very specific units I don’t own because I skipped that entire era. I know everyone’s going to say “pull for who you love,” but that argument kind of falls apart when the character isn’t even usable on your account. I don’t expect every unit to be broken, but I do expect them to function without needing a locked-in roster. Everything up until Fontaine felt fine in that regard. Most characters were at least somewhat self-sustainable, and you could make them work with what you had.
Because of all that, I decided to focus on the Hexerie side of things and skipped everything with Columbina in mind. I waited months for her. Literally months. And now she’s here… only to turn out just as restrictive as the units I skipped in the first place.
That alone would’ve been frustrating, but to make it worse, I lost the 50/50 on her banner back to back, both times at around 85 pity. After saving and waiting that long, that just felt brutal. It really adds to the feeling that I put in all this patience and planning only to get punished for it.
I passed on multiple characters specifically so I could invest fully into Columbina, and now I’m being told she’s only really “usable” with like four very specific units I don’t own because I skipped that entire era. I know everyone’s going to say “pull for who you love,” but that argument kind of falls apart when the character isn’t even usable on your account. I don’t expect every unit to be broken, but I do expect them to function without needing a locked-in roster. Everything up until Fontaine felt fine in that regard. Most characters were at least somewhat self-sustainable, and you could make them work with what you had.
Commentaires
I for one am very content with Raiden/Ningguang-Columbina-Aino-Baizhu/Zhongli teams. The damage is good. The reactions are pretty. The game is fun. But yes.
Genshin is getting excessively premium-locked.
If it's any consolation, since you have Columbina, then Zibai is the only other 5-star character you'd need for a Lunar-Crystallize team. The other slots are Illuga and Gorou, both of which are 4 stars, and both of which have their rates boosted during Zibai's banner.
It's the other way around, Lauma is still very good without Nefer, Lauma have value even in non lunar team.
From a meta standpoint Bina in a LC or LB team without Ineffa or Lauma is going to feel really bad. Damage% buffs don't apply to Lunar reactions (it uses "elevate" instead) so you're much better off with Furina or Yelan in every scenario. Even in more recent overworld content with inflated HP it still feels bad running her without Ineffa but it's at least doable.
She's so much more restrictive compared to Mauvika who even without other Natlan characters still provided much needed off field Pyro app and could still burst every other rotation as a solo NSB off-fielder.
this is the problem, people need to realize Meta is not a be all/ end all, you can still do things without having meta builds, you don't need meta builds for a grand majority of content and never have.
If you have followed along with the character releases of the last 2 regions at least, you would see that the regional characters will be most meta for the time the game focus is on that region and that the Archon would be a character that works in harmony with the regional cast. In Natlan this was extremely clear. OP even remarks about the trend of "needing" regional characters for Nod Krai.
If they were concerned about the meta they would have seen the clear need with the trend if they wanted the "meta" build, but it's a good thing meta builds are not needed and people need to accept that.
OP remarks that they have been TOLD she's unusable, which is a lie and the only people telling anyone that are people speaking from rather toxic a meta slave perspective, not everyone needs to play meta, and playing her outside of meta is way less restrictive and still good.
You can care about meta and still skip meta characters if you don't like them... both aren't incompatible.
"Playing meta" doesn't mean "pulling and playing the current best units" at all. I've noticed gacha spaces love misusing terms like "meta" or "QoL", it's baffling.
>If they were concerned about the meta they would have seen the clear need with the trend if they wanted the "meta" build, but it's a good thing meta builds are not needed and people need to accept that.
It's not about needing to play meta, it's about WANTING to play meta. This is the thing casuals don't and will never understand I'm afraid.
By the way, these same "casuals" trash on meta players when I can guarantee you that most of them play meta as well. It's just not the kind of "meta" you probably expect.
>OP remarks that they have been TOLD she's unusable, which is a lie
From a non-meta standpoint, this is a lie. But from a meta standpoint, this is true. "Unusable" here is obviously relative. And if you're arguing about the relevance of a given unit in the first place, I'd argue you *do* care about meta.
>and the only people telling anyone that are people speaking from rather toxic a meta slave perspective
The thing that I love with the casuals vs meta "slaves" thing is that they're both hypocrites. Meta "slaves" can hate casuals for playing the game differently than casuals, yet I've also seen the same the other way around; "oh you NEED to play meta huh? that's so cringe, waifus > meta" aka play the game my way.
To be clear, I get it that meta players shoving into casuals' throats meta stuff when they don't care about it is bad. However here we literally do not have any context.
Was it a meta player that came to them while yelling "LOL Columbina is unplayable without X you've bricked your account COPE!!!"
Or was it OP that asked a question about Columbina, and they got the answer that "Columbina was unplayable" meta-wise when they didn't care about meta? Both are very different situations.
In fact, our argument literally shows how up to interpretation it can be whether someone cares about meta or not if they don't explicitly say it.
I'm not reading any further because if you missed this basic fundamental then the rest of what you have written is not worth reading.
Besides, "effective" =/= strongest. This backronym truly brainwashed you all.
when there are mechanics at play that benefit Nod Krai characters, that makes them the most effective, stop being dumb.
For instance, the mobs that have White health damage, the most effecitve way to beat them is with Nod Krai units, notice I didn't say most damaging.
there's no point trying to argue what the OP experience is, if they wanted to they could tell us more than what they have already and it's far besides the point, you're getting lost in the sauce and going off an a stupid tangent .
the point is she's far from Unusable.
Saw this first, and I'm not gonna read the rest just like you did, since I've already argued on this.
Not worth reading. :)
1M per rotation assuming a 18s rotation is 55k DPS. Which can't even be called mid these days.
I get fun trying to clear abyss, SO and the Theater but let's be real, this takes less than 2h of playing in a whole month and the difference between clearing it all and left 1 or 2 stars is risible, like 3 pulls at most.
Overall Genshin is moving in a restrictive direction in terms of locking DPS behind synergies more than before. It always was a thing but they started going from 4\* dependencies (e.g. XQ for Hu Tao) to wanting cons on 4\* (Faruzan for Wanderer/Xiao) and 5\* for other 5\* (Furina for Neuv) to now needing to pull 5\* for a 5\* for a 5\* (Nefer, Lauma, Columbina or Flins, Ineffa, Columbina) to unlock maximum damage.
This is how I felt about Flins, and I'm very happy having him on my account and with his performance without Ineffa.
I Skipped Durin and Flins.
Lucky me, Lauma, Nefer, Ineffa, Columbina.
Waifu IS Meta.
You don't NEED Ineffa for Flins. You can use Fischl. You WANT Ineffa for Flins, because you want him to be able to surpass 120k DPS. You don't NEED Columbina. You can use Aino. You WANT Columbina, because otherway you won't reach 140k DPS.
By that logic, every character in this game is restrictive. Most characters in this game have a very obvious BiS team that's clearly better than everything else. Skirk is weak without Escoffier, Mavuika needs Citlali or Xilonen, Varesa needs Chevreuse and Iansam, mostly everyone needs Bennett.
You can make a Nefer team consisting of Nefer+DMC+Kuki+Aino and it will work just fine, you just won't do as much damage. Well, depends. If I do this same team using a Nefer C6 I would out damage a C0 Nefer in a Lauma+Nahida+Columbina team, so that's also relative.