The new Genshin Impact character, Raiden Shogun, has been causing frustration among fans with regards to her compatibility with other character and their abilities.
Only a day after her in-game debut the Electro Archon has sparked a wild discussion on the game subreddit and forum. While many players love her flashy playstyle and beautiful animation, some misleading wording in her ability description has led to inconvenient anti-synergy with some popular support characters. Most notably, Raiden’s inability to utilise the elemental burst of popular electro support Beidou, has shattered player’s plans for several team compositions.
Developer MiHoYo was quick to address the issue in a blog post and provide a detailed explanation of Raiden Shogun’s abilities. The main problem is that the attacks in Raiden’s elemental burst state don’t trigger Beidou’s elemental burst. This is apparently because “the attacks by Raiden Shogun in the Musou Isshin state [are] a special kind of attack,” MiHoYo explains.
To put it simply, while they use a Normal Attack movement type, the damage they deal is considered Elemental Burst damage. This means that her elemental burst attacks can take advantage of elemental bursts like Xingqiu’s, but they can’t activate Beidou’s burst that is triggered by Normal Attack damage.
That seems like a reasonable clarification on the surface, if not for a number of other factors that severely muddied the water. Firstly, Beidou’s burst description says it activates “on-hit” not “with damage”, so going off the description it should work with Raiden’s burst. Even more annoyingly for fans, it did work in the beta test and seems to be actively removed last minute.
Raiden’s C6 description was also dubbed an “issue” and has already been reworded after it was phrased in nearly identical fashion to Beidou’s elemental burst. Originally, it read that “normal, charged, and plunge attacks” in Raiden’s burst state would reduce the cooldowns of her teammates’ bursts, but it now specifies attacks “considered part of her elemental burst.”
While it all makes sense on paper, anti-synergy with Beidou in particular has become a major obstacle for players, both because other support characters like Xingqiu or Fischl work as expected, and because the two characters would be a great combo otherwise. However, being divided by small details, Raiden and Beidou make for an awkward combo.
To make matters worse, MiHoYo revealed all this information after Raiden’s banner had already launched. Expectedly, that frustrated many players who had already pulled Raiden Shogun with the assumption that the interactions worked as they did in the beta, and seemed to in theory.
All this confusion and disappointment resulted in a crowd of annoyed players. Public outburst led to mass threads on official forums and Reddit, as well as PSA posts to players who hoped to pair Raiden with certain characters. Some Chinese fans even went as far as threatening to sue the company for false advertisement.
Words by Denitsa Gencheva
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