Chronicled Wish Review
Version 5.3 Phase 2
So after nearly a year, the Chronicled Wish is back for it’s second round after Hoyo made it sound like something that was going to happen much more frequently. Whatever the case, it’s probably still worth reviewing but I’ll go over the point of it first as well as quick overview of how it works. Also since there is 7 possible 5-stars on this banner, I’m not going to write anywhere near the amount I normally do for characters plus I’ve still got the actual banner reviews this phase as well.
The point of the Chronicled Wish is, clearly, a way to offer less desirable limited 5-star characters in a way that still maintains the characters scarcity. At the end of the day, it comes down to what Hoyo think is the best way they can still make some money out of these characters. The banner itself functions a bit differently from a normal banner. Firstly, you choose which 5-star you want to go for, similar to the weapon banner. Then, when you pull a 5-star, there is a 50% chance of it being the one you wanted and a 50% of it being one of the other 5-stars on the banner. It works the same way for the weapons. It does not share pity with any other banner however. You will also only get 4-star characters that are within the “theme” of the banner. The theme of this one is Liyue so that means the possible 4-stars are Xingqiu, Gaming, Beidou, Chongyun, Lan Yan, Ningguang, Xiangling, Yaoyao, Yanfei, Yun Jin and Xinyan. What fun. Lets get to the review.
The Chronicled Wish is a bit of a trap from a meta perspective. Since the characters on the banner are ones Hoyo don’t feel they can make that much money from anymore, it shouldn’t surprise you that none of these characters are high performers in the meta though there is a case to made for some of them in a way that was harder for the original Chronicled Wish which was just pretty bad. As a general rule, the 5-stars on banner in 5.3 phase 2, Arlecchino and Clorinde, are better pulls than any of the characters on this banner for the average account however there are specific reasons you could decide to go for the limited characters. Pulling for any of these characters is not something I would recomend doing in the first instance unless you really want a specific character. Being a Shenhe wanter has been nothing but suffering for ages.
Baizhu
Baizhu is a dendro healer that is decent on a number of viable teams, notably double dendro hyperbloom teams that feature Furina. His ability to heal the whole team over time as well as provide a small shield (that acts more like resistance to interuption rather than a real shield) is quite useful wherever Furina is concerned. Outside of this however, he can struggle to justify his place in teams as his damage output is low and his dendro application is ok at best. He doesn’t really provide enough dendro application for any team to be satisfied with on his own besides aggravate teams though I’d argue that Kirara is often a prefered choice for these teams, especially if Clorinde is the on-fielder. Baizhu also has some energy issues since he needs to burst to grant a large amount of his healing as well as the shield and it can be difficult to get enough ER so he often needs Favonius Codex along with an ER sands which limits his healing a bit teachnically though his healing is strong so it’s not that much of an issue.
Overall, this makes Baizhu an ok pull has he has a place but he’s very much a luxury character. There isn’t really a team that he enables that doesn’t have a replacement (ie Yaoyao in 99% of cases).
Shenhe
So Shenhe is probably the most desired character on this banner mainly because she has only ever had 2 banners including her release back in version 2.4. What Shenhe does is provide support for cryo damage dealers with a bunch of buffs. These buffs are a cryo damage bonus based on Shenhe’s attack, a cryo damage res shred, another cryo damage bonus in her burst and either a buff to other characters skill and burst or a buff to normal, charged and plunge attacks, depending on if Shenhe’s own skill is pressed or held. In short, she’s good HOWEVER the significant parts of these buffs are to cryo damage so she only really wants to be used with on-field cryo characters so Ayaka, Ganyu or Wriothesley. The problem here is that 2 of these characters (Ganyu and Wriothesley) really just want to be played in melt teams over other possibilities. This is an issue because Shenhe’s burst actually has an ok amount of cryo application so it’s very likely to steal multiple melts in a rotation which really sucks since each indiviudal hit of the burst isn’t doing that much. This basically leaves Shenhe with freeze teams who have been struggling since Shenhe was release as it was in the back half of versions 2.x that Hoyo started making unfreezable abyss floors to counter the fact that Ayaka was making everything look like a bit of a joke, if you can believe that was ever the case. How times change. Just to make it clear, Ayaka freeze teams are still viable occationally and Shenhe is great on them but these teams are far from the meta.
Shenhe did get another new team recently and that was with the release of Chasca. In the standard team of Chasca/Bennet/Furina/[flex], you ideally want an electro or cryo character in that last slot and Shenhe is a decent option for it. While Chasca doesn’t benefit nearly as much from Shenhe’s buffs as proper cryo characters since only 30% (give or take) of her damage is cryo, its still something and seemed to be performing better than the other cryo options. That was until Citlali released. Citlali is just a straight upgrade to Shenhe in this team in terms of damage and not to mention that she provides a good shield as well. Yeah. Shenhe’s resurgence was short-lived unfortunatly.
Overall, Shenhe is actually a good character who is just held back by the fact that she is a support without a teammate who actually works with her buffs. I can absolutly see a future where they release a cryo on-fielder who favors being played in a mono-cryo team and in that case, Shenhe will almost certainly be the best support for this character. How long till they release this character? No idea but I feel we might be waiting until Snezhnaya. There’s a chance that Skirk turns out to be this character, assuming that silhouette is Skirk and that she’s cryo but I won’t hold my breath.
Keqing
This one is going to be short. Keqing is a standard banner character so isn’t a good idea to go for on the Chronicled Wish as you are likely to lose a 50/50 to her at some point. You can also pick up a copy of her in 6.0 when the standard banner 5-star selector comes back round again. Complete waste of primos for this reason alone.
The other reason Keqing makes no sense to choose here is that Clorinde is on the normal banner and I hate to say it but Clorinde is just better. They share their best team (aggravate) but Clorinde is just the better on-fielder. Clorinde also has other options like overload teams which don’t really work that well for Keqing unfortunatly. Don’t waste your primos on Keqing here, even if you think she’s great.
Ganyu
There was a time way way back in the early days of Genshin when Ganyu was considered the top DPS character in the game. How far we’ve come. In the modern day, Ganyu is an decent on-fielder in terms of damage but struggles in some content due to her melt teams being quite clunky to play. Half the reason is that she is a charged shot bow user. If you don’t like how Lyney or Tighnari play then I absolutly do not recommend Ganyu since her charged attacks are even slower. Her melt teams also have the problem of pyro application. Xiangling is great if you play like Wriothesley and are up in the enemies face. Ganyu wants distance between her and her targets so she can charge her shots. This distance typically means that Xiangling’s pyronado spends a bit less of it’s duration actually hitting enemies which is not a good thing. We do have a new option for pyro off-fielders in the form of the pyro archon, Mavuika though this doesn’t neccessarily feel any better to play to be honest. You might actually just get better results using Ganyu’s burst then switching to Mavuika and going to town on whatever in inside Ganyu’s burst and you’ll probably deal more damage. This is probably more of a Mavuika problem however plus if you want to play Mauvika, you are better off trying to pull for Citlali before her banner ends if I’m honest. This might not be the answer some people want but it’s a difficult one to avoid.
Overall, Ganyu is a decent cryo on-field though it is the least-competitive element when it comes to the strength of it’s on-fielders. Ganyu’s best teams are melt teams which sounds find in theory but can be a real pain in the ass to play so they are actually quite difficult to recommend over other easier to play and more consistent options that are not reliant on you hitting a few charged attacks which a long aiming time.
Xiao
Strictly speaking, their are 3 anemo on-field DPS characters (4 if you include Heizou though his damage output is so much worse, it feels a little insulting to include him), these being Xiao, Wanderer and Chasca. Chasca is a special case and doesn’t really function like the others and is off doing her own thing. This leaves Xiao and Wanderer stuck duking it out for the title of best anemo DPS. At this point in time, I have to say the winner of that is Xiao but it has a number on conditions on it. Both characters benefit massivly from the presence of a C6 Faruzan on their team such that without her, both don’t feel all that great. They also both love the buffs from Bennett and Furina which isn’t much of a surprise since most characters do. Xiao goes a step further however and these days has access to Xianyun who gives a significant buff to his plunge damage. Plunge was already a play style for Xiao but now he can hit harder than ever with them. This means a team of Xiao/Faruzan(C6)/Xianyun/Furina tends to be Xiao’s best team and it’s not even that close. Yes, you can also use Bennett but playing circle impact with a plunge attacker just feels really bad. Now the more of this ideal team you are missing and the worse Xiao is going to perform by a significant margine.
Overall, you could pull for Xiao if you wanted to but I generally don’t recommend it that much due to his reliance on other high value supports and, particularly needing to get C6 on a 4-star that is uncommon to find on banners plus Xianyun has never reran yet even though she came out back in 4.4. Times are rough.
Tartaglia (Childe)
Despite this characters proper ingame name being Tartaglia, I’ll be calling him Childe from here on out. Childe has one team and that is a so called national team consisting of a Xiangling/Bennet/Sucrose core. To this day, Childe is still arguably the best character to use in the last slot due to his rather specific hydro application which can lin eup very well with Xiangling’s own pyro application meaning you can vape most of it and this is where the strength of this team comes from. This team can still clear the abyss if you’ve invested enough into it and can also play it properly but those requirement are not trival if we’re being honest here. There are better teams that will clear the abyss with a lot less effort in the modern age of Genshin. Outside of national team, Childe doesn’t really have much. You can try playing him in a hyperbloom team and it’ll do fine but that’s more to do with it being hyperbloom than anything else honestly.
Overall, Childe has one decent team and if you really want to play it for some reason, you can pull for him but outside of that, there’s very little reason to pull for him.
Qiqi
Just no.
Ok, I’ll be a little more serious but first you should scroll up and see what I’ve written for Keqing. Qiqi is the same in that she is a standard banner character but different in the fact that she has no team that wants her. She is a good healer but she also generates 0 particles (yes, really) and has very poor cryo application. Yeah, I’m using another cryo healer like Charlotte, Mika or Diona if I’m ever building a team that specifically needs a cryo healer (which hasn’t happen yet but you never know). Losing your 50/50 to Qiqi normally is bad enough, don’t actually spend primos trying to get her. Even her C6 doesn’t redeme her.
Overall, don’t go for Qiqi. She is one of the worst characters in the game. Simple as.
I’ll try to write some kind of conclusion here. You shouldn’t be going for either Keqing or Qiqi since they are standard characters. That leaves 3 on-fielders and 2 supports. Since all of the on-fielder and quite mediocre in the grand scheme of things, it’s quite hard to recommend them though if you’ve got all the parts you need to make Xiao’s best team to work (C6 Faruzan, Xianyun and Furina) then there’s actually a pretty good argument in going for him. Ganyu and Childe don’t really have a case like this unfortunatly. Looking at the supports, Baizhu doesn’t really have any teams that need him but rather are just made a little better by his presence so the value is getting him is quite limited. Shenhe does have a niche but it currently sucks so her pull value is also not that high. As I said at the start, both Arlecchino and Clorinde have more value than any of these characters so unless you already have both of them, I think it’s hard to justify pulling for anyone on this Chronicled Wish and even then, there’s a lot to be said for just saving you primos.
Unless you just really like Shenhe for whatever reason. I get it.