POWER CREEP Overview in Honkai Star Rail

I explain Power Creep, its negatives as well as its positives, and how likely your character is to be power crept.

[belugastyle]

I think the speed at which powercreep happens plays a large role in how negatively it is percieved. There was no good reason to increase the power level of damage dealers so quickly to the point it temporarily broke the Path system, they could have covered the playstyles (FuA, break, DoT, freeze, counters, etc.) and elements first. Same for sustainers. Instead of making Luocha this SP generating machine with insane healing power that is both numerically strong and is super consistent, they could have made three different healers with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. I also would be far more lenient to powercreep if the relic system wasn't such a pain in the ass and we could reliably "max out" a character in a single month. Like, do you want us to keep gearing out our characters or you want us to replace them often?.. Sigh. Thank you for reading and take care.

[Phantom-zy]

I think the amount of the speed at which powercreep happened in this game is the main problem. I didn't even have finished building my characters and a new unit just powercreeped my existing character

[edshemp]

I think their biggest mistake with Destruction characters is making their drawback too light. Jingliu lifeloss is almost unnoticeable if your team has any sort of sustain, I don't think she should be playable without a good healer, making team building a consideration for keeping her power in check, and Dragon boy skill point usage is too easy to build around, I think Bronya gives me more work to build around her SP usage. But I agree, they have been working on it, and hopefully we can get power balance between paths in a better place with the new mode and the new floors. Great video!

[TheJuicyTangerine]

It's also important to notice that whenever a new character comes out, their power level feels inflated due to the content released at the same time. When dan heng was released, a ton of new enemies had imaginary weakness. The MOC blessing benefitted characters like Dhil so well that other skill point eaters, namely Qingque suddenly skyrocketed to S tier albeit being a 4 star ERUDITION character. Not to mention, that the hardest content to benchmark at the time was Swarm Disaster, which not only released a new path specifically for DanHeng, but every single enemy in the final boss challenge was weak to imaginary.

The element system means that certain characters shine in different scenarios. If there are no fire weaknesses in MOC, himeko drops from A tier to probably low B tier. If there are no CC effects to cleanse, then suddenly Bailu becomes fairly decent in the meta.

When Argenti is out, you better bet that Physical is going to be more commonly seen as a weakness, even though it's the least common weakness among characters. When RuanMei comes out you can bet the blessing in MOC will have to do with weakness break.

[Tigrion]

honestly the only power creep i hate is when the new content becomes so hard that my limited 5* unites unless they have the perfect set and stats and there weapon feel weak to clear it and they introduce the new shiny unite that can clear it more easily but still needs like a few weeks time to build and get to the point it can clear the content its then when power creep is annoying to deal with hopefully we dont get there anytime soon in HSR

[Plotpurotto]

I think the biggest issue I got with the game is the relic grind as a whole.
The reason is because you gotta pray your damn rng you get atleast some optional main stat and substats, this heavily discourages players to experiment wide variety of different team comps and you gotta as well hope you roll the stats you want to be increased, which is yet again, rng.
If the relic grind wasn’t so ass I wouldn’t notice a huge dip of powercreep happening if it meant we could build the characters more effciently and optionally even if the new shiny unit is exceptionally better than the others.

[jesuisradmusic]

I don't even think Genshin's power creep is that bad, people just didn't know how to play the game back in the day lol
Like, some of the strongest characters in the game are 4*'s that have been around since Day 1

[AzureDragn]

As someone who has Jing Yuan, Imbibitor Lunae, and Jingliu I find there is not a huge difference between them when it comes to clear speed. Supports, enemy weaknesses, and MoC buffs tend to be what determines who is best. Right now in the current MoC Jing Yuan and Topaz are the strongest. The 4 stars though can be hit or miss.

[simpoftunality]

If you play this game casually you wouldn't really care about powercreep. At one point it would suck to see your favorite character get replaced by an even powerful one but would you enjoy the game if you just stick to playing one dps for a long time? Obviously not, and you will find yourself investing on another dps as you get bored of them.

Fu Xuan may be the best preservation unit out there but thag doesn't stop Gepard from being unuseable. Powercreep ≠ unuseable. HSR is still quite casual that you shouldn't pressure yourself chasing the better units when there are ones out there that are still pretty good. If you want to clear at least the harder difficulty, invest on building supports first before a dps. Supports can work with almost anyone and it's just a matter who fits this dps you are switching in.

Destruction units could have been a "jack of all trades, master of none" but Hoyo definitely had a design oversight with the recent Destruction units we had. Blade can survive with an off turn healer like Luocha, Jingliu's hp drain can be countered even by Bailu unless the enemies have cc, and IL's sp consumption is easy to come by with sp positive supports. There is an obvious risk but Hoyo decided to just sell the solution in the next patch or so.

[AdamB_]

Ive always thought that Erudition units' basic attacks should also always be aoe (target and adjacent) with their skills hitting all enemies not just adjacent ones. If there isnt enough of a benefit to using skill over basic attack when the basic attack is also aoe, thats why you have the skill hit everyone. Also, a good kit should have more utility built in than JUST damage in the skill attack. It would help with making erudition useful over destruction, because you wouldnt need to use skill points to hit in aoe

[ninetailsk]

And theres HI3 insane powercreep. It just does not end 😭

[ramsgallo]

The first 5 star I pulled was Bailu, when I was wishing for Huohuo, I lost my 50/50 to Bailu (79th pull). Imagine seeing the abundance path and it was Bailu instead. A day after, I decided to wish on the standard banner because I'm close to pity, guess what, another Bailu (around 80th~ pull)!

I now have an E2 Bailu, her eidolons aren't even good. I have no other choice but to use her then.

[zyfryth]

IMO the main problem is with the path system. If you think about it different paths pay a certain cost, for certain benefit. The issue here is that Hunt pays with lack of utility, for the sake of single target dmg. Erudition pays with damage, for the ability to hit everyone, while Destruction pays with HP drain to deal massive damage to 3 units (which in most cases is the same as aoe). Now normally if everything was balanced, this wouldn't be an issue. However, the cost of HP is nothing, compared to the cost of damage. At the end of the day damage is the most important thing, as far as beating the game is concerned. In conclusion Destruction units will always be the strongest DPS, unless they completely revamp the system. It can be in no other way. Think about it, if erudition can match destro in raw dps, then Erudition will be broken, since they pay no price now... TLDR version is destruction pays a cheap cost, for a huge purchase and that is the reason why they are broken and honestly can't even be repaired...

[ABC-yjcy]

As an E2S1 DHIL owner, I couldn't agree more. He pretty much destroys ALL CONTENT. Bro obliterates all regardless of elemental alignment 😅

[shocky]

well since ruan mei release, i think powercreeping in terms of harmony characters will start to appear, because the whole point of the battle is to break enemie's toughness and ruan mei makes it soo easy
but they started to increase enemie's toughness to crazy amounts
for example latest event stage with bronya and gepard
yeah, i know they give you ruan mei, but still she makes this stage so much easier
and there is no reason not to think that thay won't add bosses with so much toughness that it will be impossible to break it without ruan mei
or for example hanabi with her 2 more skill points for maximum amount and 4 free skill points from her ult, when the whole game about managing your skill points properly

[monamourcole]

as someone who’s been a blade main since day one, him getting powercrept honestly hurt to see. He went from being my absolute hyper carry to simply just your average strong dps. Once i got Dan Heng • IL, I realized just how much he lacked in comparison. And then once I got Argenti?? Argenti wiped the floor with Dan’s dps abilities. Now Blade feels like he does nothing..

[syncdive]

i’m so glad that dan heng IL, jingliu, and blade are among my fav characters just personality and lore wise bc i really don’t know who i’d be clearing content with if not for them lmao. so them ending up as top tier dps characters was a win for me

[mikereissdesign]

Thank you for the well-researched and informative video! Entertaining and informative! Well done!

[micheladax]

Natasha must be number one in the list.

[arini_arini]

As someone who doesn't care about MOC, i don't really care about powercreep. As long i can survive in openworld and can finish simulated universe, that's enough for me.

However, having many characters make you can make and try many various team.