How would you rank the current endgame modes??
Personally I would say
1. Imaginarium Theatre
2. Spiral Abyss
3. Stygian Onslaught
Also share any unpopular opinions about them.
1. Imaginarium Theatre
2. Spiral Abyss
3. Stygian Onslaught
Also share any unpopular opinions about them.
Commentaires
I used to like IT but it lost its appeal when the difficulty is being affected by the RNG.
If they want IT to incentivize horizontal investment, they should remove the need to get the right character at the right stage and just have all of your characters available at start.
However, the nonsense 4-star thing I absolutely get. I've made it a rule for myself that I'll only build characters that I at least somewhat like, even if they'd never see the overworld.
I finally cleared Visionary in IT this patch after about a year of playing (I started September 2024) but I still can't clear Fearless because I'm missing at least one of the shilled teams every time.
I simply gave up on trying to get max reward as its not worthy of my time.
I mean... The idea is great, three bosses and everything, the execution is predatory as fuck
The feathers are convenient but they aren't needed and targeted at a specific category of player. People who are gunning for the feathers each time are usually the same type who are at least at dolphin level of spending.
My problem with SO is that even if I do have the new shiny characters, level 5 feels impossible. By the time the clock runs out I'm only halfway through the boss's hp.
I love the gameplay, the story, the aesthetic, but that doesn't mean that the flaws doesn't exist.
And I stand my word, I hate that "pull for this or work twice as hard for this easy boss otherwise".
1 Stygian
2 IT
3 Abyss
Reason being that stygian onslaught gives the biggest challange, even though I cannot clear on the highest level (6) myself. I just love having to get creative and usw all the resources (characters, weapons, artifacts etc) I have amassed over the years
IT 2nd bc of the same reason, just in a different style (spreading out my resources instead of gathering them in a few strong teams)
Spiral abyss is just too old and not challenging for me. As a long time player and small spender (BP+Welkins consistently + some extra investment into my mains, nothing too crazy) I just wanna be challanged properly and abyss does do this worse than fighting local legends, wich is kinda sad.
Genuinely some of the boss mechanics are really cool but it's obvious they are meant to make certain charactets a LOT better than others.
Stygian is not that atrocious, after all the useful rewards (primos and reshape feathers) are fairly easy to get, but I feel like it is a wasted opportunity of what could've been a great endgame mode. It is a step in the right direction.
I mean sure
Trade off is that bosses now take that into account and have more time wasting mechanics like the Abyss ones and will instead have also less time to go through it, with their currently inflated HP remaining intact
Honestly the gameplay was always about rotations and optimizing that rotation to the T which feels satisfying, starting with 0 energy just leaves you with an awkward phase at the start trying to get your bursts back.
Don't get me wrong i hate enemies that stall but at least it's accounted for, but now staling depends on how fast i can get my burst, which depends on how much er i have (rng) and whether i have fav weapons (more rng).
Not only it put a lot of old units on the backburner for a while because getting their ults is just impossible in an average stygian, low spenders are now more incentivised to get either C1 or R1 as well, the same kind of people Fearless stygian seems to be targetting. Ofc I know of all the f2p clears and whatnot, but both of them know how precious ER is in this mode. And now the game gave them a legitimate reason to get sigs even outside of mere appreciation
The heartbreak with this tho is we can see how much creative they can get with certain bosses with adding new mechanics intended for higher difficulty.
raid would be nice if we actually had more than 4 characters but unfortunately that's not a thing in classic mode 😅
its literally impossible to do with a weak team because the timer runs out
cant they make it at least so theres no timer to fight the boss, but the timer is for the reward instead? idc about tne reward i just wanna fight the boss’s new mechanic in SO but timer ends with boss hp at 80%
- give primo with almost 0 effort (coop-able + floor 10 hp pool)
- only give the reward that not useful for casual but more use for tryhard player
- some benefit for those play it repeatly (being a small event thats actually matter = content)
This on the surface is the ideal ppl wanted for so long until the shill kicks in (they actually always give 1/3 boss that not heavily shill every rotation but still)
SO has produced the finest cooking of any mode in Genshin. Amber at the top of the meta (more than once!). Crescent Pike Zhongli vs the Herra, and/or Chongyun to force Cryo aura. Perma-stagger Overload Mavuika rotations vs the Shock Trooper. Using Albedo elevator vs the Field Generator to buff various Qs. Double Carry vs Aeonblight.
Xilonen, or PyroMC+Kachina, were enough to advance it to a less-resistant state, so as long as you had teams with good dps (in the 100k+) that could slot one of those (and nice dodging skills or very high survivability to withstand its attacks in berserk mode), you could do Fearless. Read its mechanics, as long as you can keep the Nightsoul state up for a few seconds (like 10 to 15 seconds), it advances to the next mode which has lowered resistances.
Stygian Onslaught second because I can perfect rotations on my best party compositions. As a non-meta puller, it's very challenging. For example I had to learn how to do the Mavuika combo the most efficient way possible because I don't have Citlali and Xilonen.
Spiral is the most meaningless endgame for me right now. I just full star it first try for the primos and don't think about it again.
It's amazing the number of times that Yoimiya and Rosaria have stood out as pillars of my theater runs. I rarely use them during normal play, but they always perform well in theater.
IT actually feels fun
I personally hope floor 15 is Dire difficulty, and similarly only rewards a skin. Maybe wings or a separate weapon set. Or an aura, etc.
Floor 14 should be Fearless, floor 13 maybe Menacing? Or is Floor 12 already menacing tier…?
Still, way harder than Hard SO. Probably 80% of the way between them
As much as I’d like extra Primos, I wouldn’t expect it.
I also request floors 13-15 in every survey. ;)
Literally Imaginarium Theater is for heavy pullers. For people who have pulled countless of characters, otherwise you can't even unlock higher stages. So what are you talking about?
I play for fun, that's why I hate Imaginarium Theater, because they force me to form a team of random 4 characters, without me having any saying in what those characters will be. I am limited to 3 elements, and on top of that, if I don't roll the characters I want, I can miss the star. Imaginarium Theater doesn't require skill that much, but it requires RNG luck and a lot of gacha investment. With just 20 characters roster you won't be able to even start higher modes.
I don't think I agree with this. IT is actively antagonistic to people who like to play characters, because the elemental restrictions and RNG in character acquisition completely gimp certain characters, especially as we've been getting more and more characters with niche restrictions (e.g. team elements, faction effects).
For example, if I like to play Kinich, and the IT is Dendro Hydro Electro, I'm going to have a bad time. The only recourse is there being a Pyro Special Guest AND me owning them AND me having both of them available at the same time during my run (on Lunar, you're required to have at least 4 spare characters, so you might not even see one of them).
And while IT is often considered the easiest endgame mode, the higher difficulties absolutely scale up to the point where a character with half their kit disabled is not going to cut it. And now there are rewards locked behind star completion, which didn't used to be the case.
If you're only concerned about the lower difficulties, then it's uncharitable to compare against things like Fearless SO or SA Floor 12. And the lower levels of SO and SA are easy to clear for players who "like to play characters", with the added benefit that they can do so without restrictions.
2) IT
3) Abyss
Stygian is fun. Trying different team comps to see what works for a boss is fun. For example, bringing out my Amber for the Lava boss was great. As someone who rarely goes for sigs and even more rarely goes for cons, it makes me go back and actually learn proper rotations for teams to clear the stages. Starting with no energy kinda sucks though, as it pretty much locks every support into using Fav weapons.
IT is alright. My characters are all 85+ 9/9/9 with generalist artifact sets (mainstats and for some of my characters the ER requirements as well), so I don't have any roster issues and I enjoy them adding 2 more stages to it. Guaranteeing a character invite of the recommended element before each boss was a good change as well. The Arcana card collection is whatever though. I'll bother with it in a year or so, when it can be completed, but for now I'll just pick whatever I haven't collected yet.
Abyss is just boring. Especially since wanting to experiment with comps means I'd have to repeat previous chambers, so I don't bother with that. I go in with my 2 best teams, finish it in less than 30min and dip until it resets.
Thanks to Abyss I can use my Mizuki and Lauma Crit Main dps and see if they can do also SO fearless (Spoiler: Yes ), and play them in atleast 3 difference stages.
IT
SO
Abyss is the only one that require participation. IT is just rng fest with so many auto win rooms. SO gives nothing of value.
2. Spiral Abyss - 7/10 classic OG gamemode
3. Stygian Onslaught - 0/10 - shouldn't be added at all.
Imaginarium Theater gives me a reason to use all my built characters, so it beats the other two by a country mile
Spiral Abyss allows me to use whomever most of the time for easy primos. Very low stress, overall.
Stygian shills certain teams and characters way too much to be fun, imo. I usually just get the primos and one of the feathers and then dip.
Imaginarium theatre is amazing, not only the gamemode but also the actual place and the vibe.
Stygian is… fine, good concept but f2p unfriendly.
Abyss is meaningless, what’s the point in keeping the mechanics such as no food if it’s no longer the most difficult endgame? It’s just boring
Stygian till difficulty 4 (cuz coop)
Abyss
I think Abyss is the most straightforward and boring of the endgame modes BUT it is is the most accessible and I respect it for its simplicity.
Stygian is the worst as it exemplifies everything I hate about how Genshin artificially manipulates difficulty by just manipulating numbers and adding timers.
Spiral is just easy fun, sometimes a sprinkle of challenge in there, but overall the best.
Then its Stygian, because to get the rewards is very easy, but the problem lies in the higher difficulties just being single team shills (which is why i wont rank it first)
and IT is the worst, because of the pure jank teams, and sometimes u choose the wrong enemy encounter, and have to rewind time to pick the other, the mystery boxes have a chance of just screwing you over... and I often have to use a strong character on a stage that doesnt need them as because you have to use a team of 4, honestly IT would just be more enjoyable if i could just use less than 4 characters everytime. Like i know that X character can solo this, why do i have to burn 3 other characters along side. Also i feel the buff that you level up in IT just dont do much
Imaginium Theater is annoying to manage characters but you can borrow a c6 character from whales to help. Sometimes, they don't plan out the elemental restrictions at all and you're left with a bunch of support characters and only a few actual dps characters in the elements and they may not even work all that well together because of their elements. You also can't adjust the characters you start with so you often get forced to use characters you don't want to use that early and get stuck with a lot of useless/mediocre characters towards the end. Some of the bosses really require certain elements/characters to clear so that can be an issue if you were forced to use them early. Nice rewards though and you get character poses and cosmetic items which are nice to have.
Stygian Onslaught is just BS to sell whatever mechanic and/or characters they're trying to push. Bunch of BS specially made mechanics, ridiculous health bars, and dumb shields/resistances. Weapon skins are basically made just for whales to clear which is lame. Mostly just a roster check unless you got enough c6 5-stars to ignore it. Rewards aren't really worth it for how much BS is shoved in. At least primos are basically free I guess. You do get some extra artifact pieces as well but it's only a marginal bonus. Like if you spend 2000 resin, that's only 16.67 extra pieces which is basically just like an extra day or so of artifact farming. It's better than nothing but it's not exactly breaking the game.
it
abyss
abyss is so bad as an "endgame mode", requires zero thinking, no skill, anyone can clear it after playing for more than a few months
2. I**maginarium Theatre**: I kinda like how it make me think about ressource management
3. **Abyss**: never liked.
And I've played all IT runs and I felt IT became stale. Honestly, I don't know what changes would make IT fun -.-
Imaginarium is fucking goated. Plays like a card game, allows for wacky combinations to work pretty well. And as a collector, it just feels right.
1. We can play characters we like, even if they're not meta
2. You need to come up with strategies, which characters to use where. But rng can be a little annoying when it gives you good characters at the start, then bad later.
3. You can select needed buffs and save the team you want to showcase with them for later, to hit bigger number lmao.
4. The atmosphere and music are great. Also gives 1k primos, elixir bottles and lots of mora
.
Minus: swapping artifacts takes some time (thanks for these "amazing" loadouts)
1. Imaginarium Theatre
2. Stygian Onslaught
3. Spiral Abyss
In terms of accessibility
1. Stygian Onslaught
2. Spiral Abyss
3. Imaginarium Theatre
IT
SO
Conceptually i like IT more but it kinda feels like a chore because it takes so much time for full star, abyss is the easiest rn and it's done pretty quickly. SO is way too restrictive, it would be so much better if we can choose 3 out of 5 bosses imo.
I love Theater the most! 10/10 I love using wonky teams, buffed reactions, the strategy... I even like the rng, it's part of the challenge. It takes longer to complete but it can be paused and resumed at any time, no big deal. The horizontal investment favours long time players but anyone can get there, eventually.
Abyss is ok, 8/10, while it has some shilling it is varied enough to be quite enjoyable.
Stygian is shill pro max. I like the three teams and the increased difficulty ideas, but the shill mechanics are a bit too much. Its primogems rewards are obtainable from low enough levels, so it gets a pass. 6/10. Also, I love the co-op option for stygian, I just wish it had more incentives, the way it is right now is just wasted potential.
1. Imaginarium Theatre
2. Spiral Abyss
3. Stygian Onslaught
Thought Stygian is still way better overall than Spiral Abyss (at difficulty 3-4) because it's way simpler, requirements are way less strict, and overall benefits (farming artifacts in stygian works quite great)
Spiral - Okey
Imaginarium - Shit / Decent (Depends if u got the chars or not haha)
theatre I can’t do the all 3 acts :/ I’ve had only one opportunity cause I had enough electro, pyro, and hydro but dam it’s just do mega high damage cause we gave everyone like 100 billion hp :(
Onslaught is fine I guess I can perfectly do the ones for the gems by the last 2 difficulties I refuse to even try :/
Theater is the worst thing that Genshin has. Too much RNG, ridiculous restrictions and lack of any control over what happens next. Sometimes you are forced to use character you don't want to waste, because you have no other choice. Sometimes your best character doesn't come when you need it (or at all). I have every single 4 star in the game and quite a lot 5 stars. And sometimes I just don't know what to pick. 2 uses per character is a joke, it should be 3, at least. We should be able to use up to three supports. Traveler should be always available, regardless of the elements. We should also pick like 3 characters that will be available from first game onward, so we actually have something to build teams from. And let us pick not full team, because wasting 4 slots, when you don't need them is annoying.
Abyss is okay. But I wish 9-10 were easier, because since Nod-Krai, my AR25 account barely can do 18 stars, but other than that it's okay. It's more tryhardy than the other two modes, but at least doesn't have stress inducing RNG.
Also echo trails should be stages that teach you how to use a character, not some random shit DPS checks, like the Raiden or Ganyu ones. And Stygian Onslaught is amazing at farming artifacts.
Theatre is shit and nobody will convince me otherwise. I don't understand why are people glazing it so much, despite not having control on what you can use, but hey, boss tells you to use Hydro and everyone is shitting themselves. Double standards much.
I think IT is the best roguelite that hoyo made. It us challenging that you need to plan your resource.
I will not stand for this Labyrinth Warriors slander. I would have really loved if they built on it and turned it into a proper permanent game mode.
It forces everyone to be at least mid-good builds and explore variety, that team you would ever play
Abyss has become a shilling fest without SO levels of dps checks. It is still fun and i still do it each time i log in. The best abysses are the ones where youre able to use lots of different teams like the current and previous one. One thing id like to happen is being able to choose the music, so sick of that OST
Stygian is a complete flop in my eyes. It is just another timed boss rush where you have to do x amounts of damage with x character in x amount of time … sure there are moments where you can do fun stuff with jean but otherwise its just repeating the same rotation multiple times against a boss with sometimes absurd mechanics (the tulpa what shields and heals itself??? Whats fun about this??)
They need to tap into multi wave content more.
It'd be the easiest, that'd destroy all the challenge
The mode is only challenging if you are aiming to get 12 stars
Abyss is quick and easy. I can collect the primos and be on my way.
SO: Create the problem sell the solution mode. But again you can collect the primos quickly.
IT: makes me waste resources on characters i dont really care about. Requires thinking. I get off work I just want to hit some buttons.
Also i can imagine cases where characters are almost bricked because Hydro isn't a chosen element. Makes Skirk, and the Lunar characters like Flins, Lauma, Nefer and Zibai almost useless. Ineffa is the only one that is usable outside Lunar teams
Stygian is usually fine, but sometimes they take the shill too far. This one was the worst because it was designed around Hydro characters in every fight.
Spiral Abyss I don't pay much attention to anymore. It's been easy to brute force since mid/late Inazuma. Even if the mechanics don't line up always, can easily slot in either a Mavuika Melt, Arlecchino Overload, Skirk or Lunar teams, and then there's pretty much nothing they can't kill between them
I really do love the flexibility in gameplay of IT. 90% of the time is team selection management. But because of how long it takes to attain perfect scores. It can get very daunting with time. It takes 1 hour to beat it. I often think of we deserve to gain more primogems because of this investment in time.
This SO is insane with the chilling. I can hardly beat the dog with lunar-charge composed of BinEffa. The electro guy can't be beaten with my Varesa team. I barely beated the crab with Skirk team, Xingqiu is the goat with his constant hydro application.
I really dislike what they have changed with SA. In F12 we did not have Ley Line buffs that chills new banner characters. F12 used to be much more flexible and fun in team building. Now it is only getting unnecessary harder.
Abyss: Ok
Stygian: It's the biggest piece of dog shit
* Spiral Abyss - Feels like a chore these days, it's always either too easy or too annoying, it's rarely in-between
* Stygian - The most fun, especially when the bosses aren't too restrictive, but the worst out of the 3 when it is, just like the current one we have.
Stygian comes next, as it redeems itself by being an excellent artifact farm. Sometimes I even luck into a group doing Menacing, which I can usually contribute meaningfully to even if doing Menacing solo is usually beyond my patience to deal with. Fearless I couldn't care less about.
Spiral Abyss, I don't even bother with anymore. Never 36-starred it, and cleared it only once years ago for the Achievement. I could easily do floors 9 and 10 for the Primogems, but can't even be bothered for that. As much as people fixate on Primogems as the be-all and end-all of the game, they don't interest me enough to fight a box-o'-monsters every month for them.
Spiral abyss 2nd, it still can challenge me from time to time, esp without having access to lunar reactions, but I still enjoy it on reset, and I have fun playing around with teams i often neglect on easier resets.
I hate SO. It’s a skill issue, yes, I can never beat level 5, but the reason I dislike it so much is it’s over-reliant on having new characters being my gripe most. I like the artifacts side of things, though I wish the event wasnt limited since I often forget to do it and end up using a few fragiles. All for 1 darn artifact reroll too… at least you can do it hard difficulty to avoid struggling.
they all require different types of strategies and skill
It while sometimes annoying is a decent challenge that's not super shilly and lets you try random stuff that can sometimes work.
Stygian can be amazing but the recent one is too shilly so hopefully they back down with that a bit like you can shill a little but don't have a boss that's literally Use this mechanic or lose
Abyss has become too easy honestly to really care about. I go on win and that's it 😅
\#2. MW
\#3. Abyss
\#4. IT
\#5. SO
And I'm not a teapot nor UGC main
2. IT
3. Abyss
Despite where I ranked it, I really loathe IT.
I have achieved full flowers since Visionary mode was added and Arcanum 2 since it was added.
For a great many reasons, Genshin's character design doesn't work well with random characters thrown together. "Wacky ad hoc teams" is really just an exercise in frustration as you reset over and over in rooms and across runs.
Especially when you can't alter their builds. Too many characters have kit limitations, special stat requirements (Especially ER). Elemental Application, Field time, uptime/downtime, and more esoteric requirements like movement or elevation. Some characters would have different builds in different teams, like artifact sets that can buff one type of character but is useless for another.
In addition, the body count required is insanely high, especially as they seem to not be making more 4 stars with worthwhile kits. Building characters is expensive. On top of that, you must use 4 characters per room, which too often forces you to use your good characters.
The buffs are mostly bad. The right team matters more than the right buffs. For example, Diluc to get 1-2 Buffed Melt hits off Charlotte is far less damage than no buff Melt all his big hits off Rosaria. Even more if Diluc is built for EM, which is more damage overall *if* you melt/vape.
But this reveals a frustrating quandary: do you build attack on Diluc for a lower performance but more consistency, or EM and try to get the right partners? You likely only have so many Attack Claymores to go around, but Rainslasher is an easy to get common EM claymore. His personal damage is already borderline unusable, an attack build might not be enough in later rooms.
If you want both, well, be prepared to farm for it.
In the end, IT is mostly using the openers for the first 2 rooms and pray to RNG to get the right teams for your carries for the rest.
All these pains are multiplied by the rotating elemental restrictions.
Enough about IT for now, the reason why it's above Abyss is that Abyss is mostly SO light.
At least I feel something for IT, and I can test my skill to optimize rotations in some cases.
If I have 3 teams for Fearless SO, I steamroll Abyss.
I like SO as it forces me to improve. Even if I have the shilled teams, I still need to adapt and improve my rotations.
So far, I've been able to complete Fearless every time but not Dire. I don't expect to, without multiple c2r1 teams.
2. Abyss
3. Theater
I don't like how stygian is going harder and harder into shill mechanics but it's still the best for me because of things like how well it's set up for speed running (you can redo each side individually, it records your time, etc.) and the fact that you can use it to farm artifacts. I've had much more fun trying to optimize builds, rotations and so on to improve my times than I've ever had with theater.
Abyss is fine. Not too much to say about it.
Theater is kind of a chore for me most of the time. Feels way more dependent on the RNG of getting characters at the right time than anything else. The randomness of it is annoying on top of the roster restrictions. It's the least "meaningful challenge" for me by far.
Abyss is fine. Floor 12 exists as a character check for the current banners but most of the time it's fine.
Stygian ranges from another character check to brutally punishing. I don't particularly enjoy it, and the rewards are just ok for the level of damage output required.
Problem with Stygian is that it punishes you for not pulling them.
IT is the only endgame mode which actually feels like playing a game. It tests your ability to design and adapt your team to each encounter. This plus the blessing system makes for a different experience each run which makes playing it actually interesting and fun.
Stygian is very confined with each boss typically only having a handful of teams capable of clearing. A lot of people are just copying teams and rotations online with maybe a small bit of tweaking. This leaves the actual gameplay to execution which can be fun but is mostly boring.
Abyss is just too easy after you have two or three strong teams.
For abbys i always trying to clear floor-12 with whatever stars i can get. I'm good without full stars. Meanwhile in IT, i finally can use any other characters that usually get benched, or I don't even think about building them in the first place! The RNG and element restrictions can be frustrating but i still enjoyed it most of the times!
1. All modes co-op able with rewards (raids!)
2. Characters start with energy (not have energy sucks)
IT is very fun if luck is good, can use powercrept and old chars. SO because its just a banner pull check and its just a really predatory and bad gamemode, and also i think they always had mavuika on buffed chars since the start.
Abys: 8
Stiyian: 6
2. SO. I like being able to meet people in coop en try to defeat menacing with each other.
3. SA. In my opinion it is the most boring mode and I don't love how it always shills the next new thing.
IT to me as a long term player who has 90% of the characters in this game built is a fun puzzle. I love gettin creative with the teams, and being able to use really "unmeta" characters is sucha huge plus. SpA has felt pretty boring and uninteresting for a while for me, and SO is frustrating as hell and feels like a pure DPS check with little room for creativity with your team comps...
Theatre teaches you the most about how to play the combat of this game and it gives incentive to build characters outside of your favorite few. I've grown to like it, but the character requirements shouldn't go up again anytime soon.
Onslaught is mostly a DPS and character quality check. It is by far my least favorite. However, a great feature of it is that you can coop it up to Menacing. I guess it's also good to have one mode where the reward ceiling is significantly higher than the others.
I'd love to see them go further with combat challenge designs. Hyakunin Ikki style creativity or an old school Domain style gauntlets could go hard. I also like the Echo challenges quite a lot. They often need you to have built your character in a way that they'll survive even alone, and they require you to know the character's playstyle quite well.
okay with abyss
and onslaught shills current meta. if you just want primos ez if you want feathers you gotta try.
Has skill expression, and is genuinely a fun account challenge
It also encourages player to player interactions and has several cool gimmicks, like Arcana Collection and Photopose/Trail rewards.
It's also by far the most well made gamemode available
With lots of cool little touches, and the most interactive lobby
I saw so many players hating on this gamemode for almost to no reason, uncontested number 1.
Abyss and Stygian are kinda similar.
I like Stygian more because the rewards are more exciting, and the coop gimmick could be fun at times.
SO: My only current issue with SO is when they shill all 3 bosses way too hard for current patch banners. In the past it hasn't mattered to my account that much, but this current SO requiring hydro across all three bosses to beat them is extremely frustrating. Especially when the hydro cast is extremely limited.
I'm already nerfed by having 230 ping so cheesing bosses is often out of reach for me.
Spiral Abyss: It's fine. Once your account gets to a certain point, it becomes pretty ez. Especially if you've built your account horizontally.
IT: It's good on paper but my personal grievance with it is how RNG it can sometimes feel. Whether it's the rooms or the character given, bad RNG often has forced me to restart deep into a run which feels really really bad. Ultimately, the RNG sometimes making things out of my control is the biggest factor on why I personally like it the least.
1)Stygian
I enjoy artifact farming and playing in a group.
2) Abyss
Nothing really interesting to say
3) Imaginaerum theater
I haven't yet gotten hang of it yet
I see the appeal but it isn't for me.
1. Stygian
* Really became my favorite. I pretty comfortably clear Fearless and have a small chance for Dire so I quite a nice sweet-spot to sit in. Hoyo absolutely needs to chill when it comes its shill but overall the challenge and optimization SO let's me do easily makes it my favorite by quite a wide margin. Also the better Fearless+ Boss mechanics result in some of the best fights this game has to offer.
2. IT
* I very much enjoy the latest version of IT. Trial Character are actually useful and while you're still OP in the later stages it's way less braindead than it was before. So far I beat all of those, let's see how it is when I get an actual bad rotation for my account.
3. Abyss
* Abyss really just became an annoyance, while I technically like it more than IT it's mechanics and designs are quite the chore. It really lost its identity as an endgame mode over the years and is in dire need of a major overhaul. Either make it test of Endurance and Sustain without a timer or an AoE centric mode. Any actual identity would work. Just pick one and roll with it.
I'm a welkin only player and played constantly since 1.3, and I breeze through IT and Abyss, but I'm sweating through SO. I've been able to clear every fearless SO with a lot of trouble until the current one. I've only been able to clear 1 out of 3 on fearless this rotation.
To put it as simple as possible I tend to pull only between 1/2 - 1/3 of all 5\*.
Those I like vertical, those I need C0.
Makes my account a bit unbalanced and I had my fair share of "yikes" clears for Abyss and IT but it never led to me failing one. But that was primarily due to me saving for over a year in order to pull Pyro-Archon C6. So I couldn't go vertical on Neuvi or Arle what I would have done normally.
Since that little non-sense I've been busy fixing my account and got it done right in time for SO.
First few Fearless took me a while but things got better quickly.
My Pull Plan for NK was: Flins, Nefer, Bina, Nicole:
So far I could stick to it and even had some luck so I got them at C2, C1/R1, C2, and have two full patches to save for Nicole so she can be a vertical +2 again if I want to.
Apparently a good plan since I've been able to do the 3rd Dire in a row now.
(Some cheese involved tho! :D)
Cheatcode: C6 Mauvi can brute everything I struggle with, likely one will be shilled for a Char I have vertical and the 3rd then only needs to be easy OR cheese-able OR happen to be shilled to another vertical I have and its a Dire clear! :D
The version so far has really been big validation for my approach so I will keep it up and aim to get favorites at 2 or 3 Cost. Although Weapons really rose in my priority as Cons are are given out for free now. Especially Support ones... looking at you Nicole!
Abyss have been my playground for a long time right now, I’ve been testing new teams with not so much optimizations and having fun.
SO is too restrictive and fundamentally change how we are supposed to play the game, it also blatantly forces some characters with specific mechanics over others, unless you can brute force with high investment characters. I’ve seen leaks for the next SO rotation and I know I will beat it cause I have good characters with good builds against it, but some of my friends are not so happy about that lineup.
In this current rotation, I had 2 options: use my Flins team sustainless without Ineffa so I could beat the second boss easier and the first boss with more difficulty, or brute force it with my Skirk c1r1 premium team, which was my choice since I did the same when he ran for the first time in 6.0 SO. None of those options felt good. I wanted to use my Clorinde C0R0 with Yelan, Fischl, flex slot so I could use the “right” mechanic to beat it, but I simply had not enough dmg to finish him. After I beat Fearless for the first time, I started to mix and match new teams to beat that oprichnik again, this time I put Ineffa instead of Fischl on Clorinde’s team and beat it first try. That also didn’t feel good.
Theather: stressful, luck based, feels like work
Abyss: a walk in the park, 1 or 2 tries to bear it
Spiral Abyss
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This is the one time I’ll say that hsr does soemthing better than genshin. Hsr’s version of Stygian is just outright better than genshins one.
Hsr’s one also shills the current meta, but is way more forgiving in the teams you can use, and when you get to the final fight of that, what would be the equivalent of a dire mode fight, you get to choose between 3 buffs for 3 different team archetypes, the shill team will obviously be the best, but you can still clear with others at a fairly reasonable rate. And then the challenge for the whales is that the equivalent of the difficulty after dire with massively inflated hp and stricter turn limits, it’s clearly for the whales, but the average player can still complete regular dire mode.and to top it off, the only reward that’s limitted is a avatar frame, no limitted time weapon skins.
Abyss I still like, although I always feel disappointed when it’s too shilled, and by that I mean, like with the current abyss, I like taking different teams that I don’t always use often, but then I open abyss and see the cactus boss, or the duck boss, and I get sad because now it’s just use ineffa, there’s no brute forcing it with a fun team, it’s you will use electro charged or you will not clear. It’s not hard it’s just boring when it forces specific units too much.
Theater, probably the most interesting mode, has its own flaws, but it’s kinda cool, nice when they made some reactions in there a thing that aren’t available anywhere else like I think the one theater we got a cryo and dendro reaction, cool when they do things like that.
Abyss is boring. IT is goated and rewards me playingthe game since start so i own enough characters to clear it - ofc sometimes there are piss-awful encounters like hydro-lizard that sucks your energy.
What I don’t love, and what really ruins them, is the relentless Shilling of the newest characters, it’s hella scummy. Especially when there is literally ONE character that can clear the boss (lunar charged bosses, that one Stygian 3rd boss which was essentially “bring arlecchino or don’t pass at all” and finally the very first Stygian: that FUCKING Skirk boss)
I have a decent account, plenty of meta characters, lots of good builds. I could not beat the Cryo boss in that first menacing Stygian for the life of me. Then I did it in co op with my friend’s lvl 80 badly built Skirk? Passed ridiculously easily.
Sry this has turned into a rant,
TL;DR: love the endgames modes, hate the shill
Theater technically has the lowest requirements for max rewards if you have enough characters to meet entry requirements. It also rewards some creative teams and builds. This is the most fun game mode.
Stygian is a (new) character check. Difficulty 4 is the limit for reliable brute forcing. Some bosses on difficulty 5 require use of character restrictive mechanics to clear. Difficulty 6 has very few viable alternative options.
Abyss is a damage check, Theatre a character check and Stygian's higher difficulties cater to whales, they all have their purposes. I do really wish that, either they'd reset more frequently or to get another endgame mode, like a weekly boss rush or something, that allows us to make use of whatever characters we want instead of hyperfocusing on the new shiny toy :/
...yes I also play ZZZ, yes I want an equivalent of Hollow Zero.
(Edit) Right this was about ranking, uhhh
Theatre first for it's relatively forgiving difficulty and character variety
Second I rank Abyss, gives nice rewards but I don't like how drastically the difficulty can vary
Dead last is Stygian. I'll take the primos but I'm not torturing myself past Menacing (that is if I can even beat that)
2. Abyss
3. Theater
I prefer investing vertically than a huge c0r0 roster. But that doesn’t mean I want a small roster. Over time, I will have a huge roster full of vertical investments.
This mode would have been cool in 3.0 but nooo...
2. Stygian Onslaught. I do only Fearless but it's very nice challenge as I have to always try multiple teams and multiple runs before I pass.
3. Spiral abyss feels mostly primo farming now, it has become too easy for me. I hope they add a floor or 3rd stage there or something, pure hp inflation haven't work this far and I think something more spicy would be it more fun.
Abyss
Imaginarium
Stygian makes people actually talk about the game’s combat. Heck, there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to Onslaught clears. There are numerous videos that come out on how to beat it, and the community is always coming up with new and inventive ways to beat the new Onslaught bosses. 9/10 mode.
Abyss and Imaginarium are a bit mid in comparison, but what makes Abyss a bit higher is that Imaginarium at the end of the day is a character check and not a skill check which sucks imo.
What would be the best endgame mode in Genshin though, imo, would be WhiWa from WuWa. WhiWa is an AoE endgame for those who don’t know. And that would shake up the meta a lot in Genshin, in some really fun and interesting ways.
I wished they do Theater on a biweekly basis and abyss on a weekly basis, ofc they can adjust the rewards, but if your account is kind of set, it’s really boring
Edit: another thought that ran into my mind: if they do it on a weekly schedule, people wouldn’t be frustrated if it’s shilled for characters they don’t wanna pull. For example now, if there are players who can’t clear abyss, they get reminded 30 days that they didn’t make it (Probably a marketing move idk). If it’s weekly it doesn’t feel bad that the last you „only“ reached 24 stars or something.
Stygian next, I don't mind it at all but getting to 1200 just to get the BP and the rest of the rewards feels like a chore to me.
Abyss is just getting ridiculous tbh. Like why are we making it impossible to 36 it? Approaching five years and I still can't 36 it consistently...
Say what you want but Stygian‘s rewards are very forgiving to obtain. You can even coop them with one minor exception. What I don‘t like in it (as well as abyss) is the insane shilling in recent times.
Theater actually has the potential to be the best, but to me the issue of the randomness of which characters you happen to have available utterly ruins the mode. I love the idea of the elemental restrictions cycling through, but good god is it annoying to try and use any specific lineup of characters in there. This grows increasingly worse as more recent releases are far more dependent on each other as well… if they change that and adjust the other factors to balance it out, it would be the best mode I think.
Abyss is just abyss. It‘s fine. Wish we would get something without a boring time limit for once though.