Honkai: Star Rail and Power Creep

Losing your 50/50s just means you’re playing the game on hard mode

Timestamps:
0:00 Hold my Beer
0:07 What is Power Creep?
0:45 Quantifying Power Creep is Hard
1:32 Comparing (some) Damage Dealers
1:54 Blade
2:58 Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae
4:00 Jingliu
5:20 Acheron
5:56 Sustainers
6:18 Luocha
6:26 Huohuo
6:39 Fu Xuan
7:00 Aventurine
7:40 Nihility Units
8:17 Harmony Units
8:20 Sparkle & Bronya
9:21 Ruan Mei & Robin
9:56 Good and Bad Matchups
13:06 Power Creep is Good Sometimes
13:43 Retroactive "Buffs"
15:36 Non-Limited 5*s
15:56 Fear of Missing Out
16:58 Conclusion
17:50 Channel Members♥

Stuff I used:
T-Posing on Yanqing

Furina Animation

[ALittleSIMPle]

Edit: Obligatory "Firefly's strong, she will continue to be strong, and current content is gonna make her look a lot stronger" statement. After a few patches, she will (probably) go back to being regular-strong, just like all the other strong units I talked about xd

I'm not totally certain I've convinced myself with this video, but I am at least confident that I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Feel free to let me know your thoughts, because I don't have any friends to ask

[sakamotoverge]

Powercreep is real.

Animation powercreep that is. 😭

[saturn_illus]

Agreed, star rail isn't actually that bad on the powercreep, but they sure as hell will make you feel as if all your units have been powercrept.

[raydaug]

Star Rail is in an odd spot in terms of power creep. Every new DPS is stronger than the last, with Acheron blowing the lid off the power ceiling. But the power floor, the minimum power needed to clear content like MoC, still hasn't caught up with Seele, the first banner in the game. At this point in time, the only real reason to complain about power creep is either you are chasing the highest damage-per-screenshot, or your personal favorite is no longer the undisputed best.

[cringelord]

1:36 DONT THINK I MISSED THAT PEAK TRANSITION

[effortlessfury]

The power creep in this game is, as you have observed, in the enemies moreso than the playable characters. This has a cascading effect on the playable characters, of course, but it's not the kit designs themselves that are being power crept. Like you said, older characters stop receiving a player’s investment over time, so they will start to languish against this enemy power creep. The problem with simply going back and investing in older characters, though, is that relic rolls have diminishing returns, and trying to improve a character becomes harder (and thus more of a waste of time to attempt).

Star Rail is definitely designed like a game in its genre. There is a continuous chase to stay ahead of enemies, whether than means building new units or rebuilding old ones. That's not power creep by its traditional definition, it's part of most similar games. It is, however, exhausting for some folks (like me). XD It reminds me why I don't tend to play games like this, because I personally don't find it rewarding. HoYo at least does a decent job at balancing the kits for those happy to refarm for older characters.

[Kain]

“Of five turns, three means pain” I never even realized this, fits so much with jing liu’s lore 🤯 4:45

[noahi.]

Star Rail's powercreep right now (as of its first year) is closer to exploratory powercreeping than outright number-boosting IMO...
All units are trying to fill different niches.

I mean, if you see the [5-star] DPS'es...

Clara is an UNO REVERSE berserker (and honestly the best standard 5-star to pick up after Bronya and Gepard)
Himeko is an AoE slicer (but slow without proper supports)
Yanqing... is supposed to be a single target glass cannon, but his passives are so hard to maintain with the strength of enemies rn...

Seele is a blitzer
Jing Yuan is an AoE missile with a long charge time (though that charge time REALLY HURTS his usage rate)
Blade is a self-sustain HP-SCALER who works similar to Clara.
Kafka is a DoT-scaler
Dan IL is an SP-charged nuke
Jingliu is a self-buffing DPS who charges from team HP (excluding her own)
Topaz is THE Follow-up Attack (FuA) cornerstone (heh)
Argenti is an AoE Ult nuke
Ratio is a debuff-reliant FuA unit
Black Swan is a cracked DoT APPLIER
Acheron is a debuff-scaling nuke
and finally...

Boothill is a Break Effect-scaling single-target nuke. (his passives are already officially out)

Spoilers in replies for Firefly and Jade.

[drmluvr]

As a Blade main who's had to skip both Sparkle and Robin, I'm definitely starting to feel some pressure. I have plenty of other damage dealers and good supports, but I hope someday we'll get a unit who boosts his standing like we have for Jing Yuan. :') Powercreep discussion aside, this is such a good video in general! Your editing and scripting are super entertaining and well-done! I'd planned to put this on in the background while playing Star Rail, but ended up giving it my full attention just because of that. Looking forward to checking out more of your stuff :D

[Mr.Heller]

If they released one new character per patch instead of two, people wouldn't even notice powercreep, right now theu just throw them at us.

[winterkenn]

Something that I saw you mentioned on Jingliu also applies to Acheron; they both have downtimes, contrary to Lunae or Blade, for example, that can just deal their dmg straight up.
Also a good benefit of all these units is that they often can ignore enemy weaknesses, unlike Break Teams that have rised recently.
I can see the conversation and why people might think of powercreep, but any unit can make work with enough effort and love. There are channels dedicated to fully star Pure Fiction and MoC with 4⭐ only.
I, myself, have cleared all MoC rotations with Lunae without much trouble.
Having fun the way you decide should be what matters
Really liked the video and the discussion. And the sound was just fine! Felt like you described well what you wanted to express

[hedgehugs]

alittlesimple upload in the middle of the night when I'm working on something i hate

truly my savior 💙

[Firmansyah-crwj]

What an underrated channel, deep analysis with tons of humor.

[cyrene]

Love how fast paced this is while being jam packed with info and memes

[krystalwhispers]

he has awoken from beneath the rock and blessed us with another banger of a video 🫡

[maevethefox]

I feel like the FOMO bit at the end hit my "feels bad" more than any actual thought of powercreep.

My Seele and Kafka are still fine, better than they were when I first pulled them, honestly. Yeah Seele is doing 60k and Acheron is doing 400k, but Seele goes 7 times a cycle, I don't necessarily think she's being badly DPS crept.

What gets me is that the new enemies and MoC buffs are always geared to the new limited 5-stars. I lost my 50/50 on Aventurine and went from full starring MoC 12 to struggling to finish MoC 10 because the lineup was filled with enemies that needed shields to beat.

I never really get the sense of 'x character is bad now' but I feel constantly bombarded with "you'll be screwed for months if you miss the new guy" and if anything it makes me LESS inclined to put money or effort into the game. Limited 5-stars are dropping every new patch, as are new relic sets, and keeping up feels brutal.

The other piece is that 4-stars feel ... largely useless compared to their Genshin counterparts. Obviously there are a few Pela-shaped exceptions, but for the most part having full teams of limited 5-stars seems like the rule more than the exception for endgame.

All of it drives the feeling that no character is skippable, and it feels BAD. I absolutely get that it's the best way to drive monetization, but ... for me at least it leaves me so much less inclined to spend because you don't end up feeling satisfied with your new shiny character for very long.

[JoshieBoyz]

ngl bro, putting DHIL over when you said 'long' was so smart because he's a descendant of Long, Aeon of Permanence holyy

[amo]

bro this video is hilarious but also informative keep up the vids like this man

[sutan]

14:45 Prolly the best transition in the video lol, well done

[nightshrine]

The fact that most 4 stars can't even compete with 5 stars are what makes this powercreep so much worse than this is because the game forces u to build so many teams if u want to progress end game but all the top teams are literally 3~4 5 star teams with most of them having their signature light cone