New banner released
I did not roll for nilou but i tried her trial a few times, somethings i noticed
1-Her bloom cores have much larger AoE than normal cores which i think happened after the first beta. It feels fairly huge, probably to compensate the lack of anemo crowd control.
2-Nilou sword stance changes her normal attacks into skill dmg for some reason. I dont understand why other than i guess you're supposed to use tenacity instead of Heart of depth but she still scales with hp and doesnt get tenacity buff.
3-Interestingly, on her own trial she uses 2 tenacity and 2 heart of depth meaning mihoyo sees her as DPS but her goblet and hat give hp% instead of hydro dmg and crit. Her burst also only does big hydro dmg and nothing else. I dont know what the "best" way to build her for now.
4-Nilou step stance gives her a hydro aura that is basically super barbara skill. It does no dmg but aplies hydro fast off field while you move around. It sounds like a godtier ability for freeze which sucks since her passives dont work on freeze...
5-Nilou blooms can akill you if you have no healer. I must've forgot this since it's more annoying even more than i thought. The lack of dendro healers/shielders limits her comps and forces her to bring barbara or kokomi. Nahida would be better here.
6-Due to how bloom works, you can pop a bloom per enemy meaning the more enemies more blooms meaning ACTUAL QUADRATIC SCALING. From videos i see it seems very strong against groups but kinda weak against bosses
7-Nilou still sounds playable on different comps if you're willing to hard ignore her passives. The fact that she can apply water on or off field for free already makes her more flexible than most, and you can give her a harbinger if you want her as field dps. If it's copium or not i dont know, but it might work regardless.
So yeah, just be sure you know what you'll get if you roll for nilou. She will probably get better after nahida and more dendro supports release.
In other news, i got bit by the gambling bug and rolled on weapon banner to get the 4* sword (oh no) but i got """"lucky""" and only took 30 pulls to get the new 4* sword (Xiphos) that i'm going to give to kazuha cause he deserves it. I feel like i'll regret this later but kaz deserves something more special than iron sting so i'm happy (for now).
tbh that's what I expected when you look at geo ceo and raiden.
I also don't remember a lot more leaked dendro chars that fit into the support role (unless mihoyo cooks up some surprises or a gimped 4* version down the line, otoh dendro MC and collei already exist), so that will probably be it.
problem is thoma is also weird to built and hard to use. I mean people already have problems with xinyan, and thoma doesn't even have the cute girl factor. usually there's some niche they can be used for to some degree, but that the combination makes it even worse. kinda reminds me of lisa pre-dendro...
Other than theories that yaoyao and baizhu are healers, zero leaks about next dendro characters and no proof of release.
Xynian sucks mostly for being a PYRO physical dps/support hybrid abomination. Her cons are also the weirdest gimmickest shit in the game. Thoma's problem is the reverse, he only does 1 thing and sucks at it until you get his cons that make him slightly less worse. His niche was being a 4* with 100% shield uptime with his burst or it was until layla releases.
At best he's a copium zhongli replacement for hu tao and yoimiya or an off field burgeon enabler due to sheer lack of options for now.