#EXCLUSIVELY considering this in-universe. peony knows exactly what's she's about | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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After all this waiting, we finally know what the new gala is gonna be like, and it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting in a whole bunch of ways, lmao. But I’m still extremely excited for it.

Since i’ve been saving for this ever since the Gala Alex banner ended, I’m currently sitting on a grand total of 600 summons, so let’s just hope I can get what I want with that.

So firstly we now officially know about Gala Leif being a thing, and man was that a roller-coaster of emotions for me. Mostly I’m just happy he’s finally coming out, but I’m still feeling extremely iffy about him being a wind sword, both because Gala Ranzal already exists, and also because I don’t even do eCiella in co-op anymore. But on the other hand, I’m also feeling kinda smug about correctly guessing that he’s be a support unit with two stances, though that probably wasn’t the hardest thing to guess, lol. But even then, his kit just looks . . . kinda strange. I really think I’ll need to hold back on making any judgments about it one way or another until we get his SP costs and damage mods, since that might really make or break him. His abilities also don’t say anything about his stance mechanic, so there might be additional things it does beyond just changing what his skills do.

On paper I think he just looks odd because the strength and defense debuffs don’t really seem that potent, and his S1 defense buff is self-only, which seems like it wouldn’t really be that great in eCiella anyway, and it wouldn’t be able to trigger doublebuff on everyone. Which is weird since he also has a strength doublebuff chain co-ab, with no apparent way to trigger it for the entire team by himself.

And since he doesn’t seem to give team-wide defense buffs, I’m honestly not sure if he’d actually be able to replace T-Hope’s role in eCiella, but for manual play that might not be a huge deal. He also doesn’t seem to have any heals or buff dispel, so he probably won’t also be replacing Lowen or OG Ranzal. And Sylas provides more potent buffs and debuffs. So I’m worried that Gala Leif might just not be able to find a place in the meta, but we’ll see how it goes. Since he has two attacking skills depending on what stance he’s in, he might be a good DPS unit, if nothing else. Which might also go with his Flurry Strength passive, which seems like a really weird ability to give to what seems like a support unit.

His unique debuff punisher co-ab and his debuff skill time ability are also really interesting, but I’m not sure how that’ll work out.

I just think there’s a big possibility that there’s additional mechanics to his kit that aren’t clear just from reading his skills and abilities, so we’ll have towait and see how he goes in practice. It’s entirely possible that he’s like Tobias, and being in his shielding stance lets him attack from range.

I’m still gonna immediately summon for him anyway and if I end up regretting that then that’ll by my problem, lmao. I’ve waited too long for this dude not to chase him.

They’re also putting the upcoming banner units on the gala, which is . . . extremely weird but also really cool. Considering that stuff like this doesn’t lead to anyone having lower than normal appearance rates, this just means that when I chase after Gala Leif I’ll have a good chance at getting some of these units too. Which would be nice, since I was already thinking that they might really tempt me.

It’s also just kinda funny that after finding out about the Xuan Zang alt I got worried that she’d be the new gala unit, which I knew wasn’t gonna happen, but then she ended up actually being on the gala banner anyway even if she’s not the gala unit, lol.

I hope this becomes a trend going forward, since it’d be a great way to give me a shot at non-limited banner units even if I just save for galas exclusively.

Anyway, these new units are the new batch of non-limited light units we’ve been desperately needing, and they look really nice. They still suffer from the fact that there’s no important fights to actually use them in until the shadow Agito boss comes out in like three months, but at least we can use them in this event.

I honestly couldn’t tell what weapon type the Xuan Zang alt was meant to be since she uses a unique weapon model in her boss battle, and she also dies way too fast for me to see her animations, so it’s nice to get confirmation that she’s a wand unit.

In general, Radiant Xuan Zang basically looks like a more tanky version of Peony, which is really interesting. I wonder if anyone will feel bad for summoning for Peony, lol. I think they’re different enough that it doesn’t matter, but they’re still really similar in a lot of ways.

Even though her DPS might not be as high as Peony’s, I do really like how Xuan Zang’s new kit looks. Her S1 strength debuff reminds me a lot of Sylas’, and she also has a shadow resistance buff on her S2. So if that sort of damage mitigation is good in the shadow Agito fight, that’d be really nice. She can also inspire the entire team with her enhanced S2, which seems to effect the entire team and not just people she’s near, so that might have a surprisingly big impact on her team DPS contribution. I think this also makes her the first light unit with inspiration, which is cool.

She also gets the new debuff skill time ability like Gala Leif does, which is cool. I guess that’ll probably be given to new units every once in a while now. The fact that it also covers bleed is really interesting, especially since there’s currently no way to have it apply to anyone who actually inflicts bleed, so maybe they’re laying the foundation for that to happen later. And since we have buff time prints, maybe we’ll get debuff time prints, which could be really useful on certain characters.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that when she maxes her charge gauge, she can lower an enemy’s paralysis resistance level. It sounds like a one-time, permanent effect, but it might have a real impact on team DPS if you rely on paralysis punishing, since this should effectively prolong the amount of uptime you can have on paralysis. It also opens up the possibility of other characters in other elements getting this sort of ability for other status effects, which could really increase the viability of certain units, especially if we get someone who can do this sort of thing for something like bog or blind resistance.

Other than how much she seems to be competing with Peony, my main worry with her is probably that her charge gauge mechanic might hold her back, and lead to her having low uptime on stuff like the strength buff it lets her give the team. Not to mention the fact that it’s an AoE buff effect, not a universal team one, so you might not be able to give it to everyone. It sounds like the amount her charge gauge gets boosted depends on how many teammates are within her AoE field when she uses her S2, so her potential seems to really depend on whether or not everyone’s grouped close to each other.

I honestly wasn’t super interested in her when we first saw her, but the fact that she’ll be on the same banner as Gala Leif makes me a lot more interested in picking her up, and I do really like how her kit looks. I already have Chitose, but I didn’t get Peony, so Xuan Zang might be worth getting. I also just appreciate that she’s effectively a non-limited light strength buff unit, which the element’s really needed for a long time now. It’s not quite as straight-forward as how Chitose’s buffs work, but it’s something.

I also just honestly really like her as a character, and like with Wu Kong I have a lot of nostalgia toward her because her event was the first one I actually got into when I started playing the game. I never really use her welfare version, so it’d be great to be able to use her alt.

Though even more than her, as soon as I saw Zhu Bajie and it became obvious he was gonna be a banner unit, I got really tempted to chase him, lol. Which is another reason why i’m glad that these units are getting bundled into the same banner as Leif. I don’t really need any light units any time soon in general, but I still really want him, and it’d be nice to not have to dream summon him.

In terms of his kit, I don’t really like enmity units in general, but he does look really strong on paper. We’ll have to see his exact damage mods, but the fact that he can manually lower his health while also having Resilient Offense seems like a really good combo. Sadly the shield he gets is just a regular shield like Natalie’s, but it does it’s job. It’s interesting that his S2 also makes it so that he can’t be healed for ten seconds. I’m not sure if that actually works well with his kit or not, since on the one hand he wants to stay at low health as much as possible, but he also needs to dip in and out of low HP to trigger Resilient Offense. He also has a unique force-strike via his ability that has a multi-step charge like the MH units, which gives him knockback res and has paralysis punisher mods.

Light doesn’t really have the sort of support for enmity kits that shadow does via Grace’s shield utility, but I think he has a lot of potential to be a really good DPS unit, and honestly light really needs more of that, in terms of non-limited units. It’s also nice that he’s an axe, since I didn’t get DY-Malora, and I don’t use S-Luca anymore now that I have G-Luca.

It’s probably worth noting that even though there’s not currently someone like Grace for light, Xuan Zang has her strength debuffs and her team shadow res buffs that should help make Zhu Bajie a lot more tanky if you use them together.

And then there’s the wildcard in the form of Sha Wujing, who isn’t actually described in the blog post they put out because he’s a 4-star. Which is kinda lame, but considering that they’re bundling this with Gala Leif AND also including a new 5-star dragon, I get why they relegated him to being a 4-star.

But either way, he might be a really interesting unit. There’s nothing to go on, but him being a 4-star isn’t an automatic strike against the idea of him being really good. There’s just lots of different things they could do with him.

Basically my main two options I’m thinking about at the moment are in effectively being a light version of Emma, or a light version of Heinwald. It’d be great to get a dedicated, non-limited light strength buffer, but Xuan Zang can kinda do that too, and I’m not really sure if him being a lance unit or something with strength buffs really ‘fits’ his whole vibe. But on the other hand, I really like the idea of him being sort of like Heinwald but for light. It’s been over a year since our last light healer came out, so it’d be really nice to get another one. And tbh as a character he really reminds me of Heinwald, so it’d make sense if they end up being similar units. But who knows.

And finally we’re also getting a new light dragon for this banner, who seems to basically just be light Freyja, except her dragon skill only energizes the team instead of also healing them. Which is a bit lame, but light already has Cupid who can heal everyone, so it’s not a big deal. Either way I’d really like to get a copy of her to use on my light support/healer units.

Interestingly it seems like they’re all still gonna appear on the next banner once the gala ends, but I think this is by far going to be the best time to get them, unless they intentionally increase their appearance rates for their banner or something. Being able to get all of them AND Gala Leif from the same banner is way too good of a deal to pass up.

Also this means that we’re not getting a split banner for this event [at least not in the same way we’ve had with recent events], so that’s great. We’re still probably gonna get more split banners in the future, but it’s nice to have all these units on one banner.

I should probably hold off on my summoning spree until we know how good the new units are [especially since Gala Leif looks like he might be underwhelming in practice], but I’ve been saving for two months for this, so I don’t think I’m gonna be able to restrain myself, lol. Depending on how long I summon for, I might have to actually keep notes of what I get so I can remember it all.

Realistically it might be best for me to just stop if/when I get Gala Leif and then save for the next gala, but with the event units being on the gala banner as well, they might tempt me to keep pulling. We’ll just see how it goes, I guess.

#dragalia lost #cygames really said fuck gala ranzal rights huh? u_u

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