With the recent announcements from both Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero confirming significant character buffs and reworks, the Genshin Impact community is left wondering if miHoYo should follow suit and begin buffing/reworking older characters in Genshin Impact.
Star Rail’s latest developer livestream revealed plans to buff popular characters including Silver Wolf, Blade, Kafka, and Jingliu in the upcoming version 3.4, with additional adjustments for other characters coming in the future.
Likewise, earlier today in a Dev Talk, Zenless Zone Zero’s developers have officially confirmed their intentions to rework older characters to maintain gameplay balance, leaving Genshin players curious about potential similar treatment in their game.
Read about the ZZZ Dev Talk Here!Does Honkai Star Rail Have Bad Powercreep?
Honkai Star Rail, despite being relatively newer than Genshin Impact, has faced significant powercreep issues early in its lifecycle. Players have increasingly voiced concerns as enemies’ health pools have continuously scaled up, forcing reliance on newer, more powerful DPS characters. This is clearly evident in many aspects of HSR such as how quickly Sunday overshadowed Sparkle, or the fact that Memory of Chaos enemy HP for single target is now 17 million with it being only 6 million 7 iterations before as shown below:
The steady increase in DPS ceiling every patch has further exaggerated the powercreep issue, highlighting why Hoyoverse has opted to introduce these character buffs to address growing dissatisfaction within their player base.
Even Though the Game is Newer, Zenless Zone Zero is Beginning to Face Similar Issues
Similarly, Zenless Zone Zero has seen notable powercreep issues since the introduction of Miyabi, a recent release capable of easily outperforming a fully-invested Ellen Joe with significantly less investment into Miyabi.
That being said, it is incredibly encouraging that the ZZZ team is already addressing these balance concerns proactively by being open with the community and expressing their plans for the future.
Additionally, by introducing new gameplay systems in Hollow Zero which can be used to trial out potential ways of buffing older characters the developers gain an insight into how to move forward with adjustments. These modifications show a clear commitment from developers toward ensuring older characters remain viable and engaging within their evolving gameplay frameworks.
Should Genshin Impact Buff Older Characters?
Turning the attention back to Genshin Impact, it’s clear that despite being years older than Star Rail, character powercreep has remained relatively minimal. Unlike many other gacha games, older Genshin characters such as Diluc, Hu Tao, and Ganyu remain capable and comfortably viable for clearing current endgame content like Spiral Abyss, even several years post-release. This is an impressive achievement and suggests Genshin has, so far, managed powercreep admirably.
However, Genshin does suffer from a different form of creep – constellation creep and outdated kit design. Many older characters have constellations that feel poorly aligned with current gameplay, lacking synergy with modern team-building.
The worst examples are Xiao’s C4, which only marginally increases defense (I still do not understand what the developers were cooking with this one), and Venti’s nearly pointless C1 are strong examples of constellations that feel disconnected from their overall character performance.
Zhongli’s Constellations in general are relatively baffling, with the Constellations being “number go up”, the ability to be a healer at C6 and the fact he can function in Co-Op at C2. These make no sense with the current game state and showcase a time where the developer intentions were likely very different. Some of the worst contellationss come in the form of a lack of Normal Attack increasing constellations for characters who scale on it such as Ganyu. At the same time, there are also many characters like Qiqi who face challenges not because of raw numbers, but because their kits lack depth and modern gameplay cohesion. To keep it on the example of Qiqi, she offers healing without meaningful utility, leaving her underutilized despite adequate raw healing potential.
Ultimately, newer characters tend to have a more cohesive kit and synergy both with themselves and other characters as well as constellations which provide a lot more comfort. These are the main problems that miHoYo should tackle! Historically, Genshin Impact has been great at buffing older characters through new supports such as Xianyun or new artifact sets and with powercreep being relatively small, they would have no issue going down this path.
Is Genshin Impact Starting to Develop Worse Powercreep?
While Genshin has managed to generally balance the fine line that is powercreep vs selling new shiny waifus, recent character releases have abruptly began to raise the DPS ceiling. Whereas strong teams previously achieved around 70-80k DPS consistently, characters since Mavuika’s launch like Varesa have set new standards, consistently reaching or exceeding 100k DPS on calculations. Upcoming synergies, such as Ayaka’s increased effectiveness following Escoffier’s recent release, continue this trend of steady, incremental DPS creep.
Given these trends, it might be the ideal moment for Genshin Impact’s developers to consider proactive changes. Not necessarily drastic buffs or reworks, but careful refinements to outdated constellations and awkwardly designed character kits. Such efforts would breathe new life into beloved older characters, aligning them closer to current gameplay standards without fundamentally changing much balance-wise.
