The Cyrene situation and debate
Hello everyone,
I am the one who made the Phainon Ultimate Sheet and I would like to answer to the following post through... a new post, because I think some clarifications need to be said and it could use some better visibility than my last comment that was answered too late.
The post in question can be found here
I want to be clear: I don't have anything against Paumansito that is asking rightfully a question ; and this post is NOT an attack.
First, let's begin with the biggest debate ever :
Cyrene's endgame performances with Phainon
Since the post was not about exclusively E0 Cyrene but also E2 Cyrene, we will talk about these 2 in different parts.
- E0 Cyrene - BiS or not?
This question arises a lot of debate, however this is precisely what I advocated since the start : Cyrene is BiS under 2 conditions. The conditions being :
- Doing the proper rotation with Cerydra and RMC ;
- For a long fight (more than 1 Ultimate).
If it does not respect one of these conditions -> E0 Cyrene will perform worse than other teams. When talking about BiS in HSR, sometimes it's not about a character being a "True BiS" in all cases - it may depend on several factors, and for E0 Cyrene & Phainon, this is exactly that.
So for any E2S1 Phainon for example, E0 Cyrene is absolutely not needed for MoC and AS ; totally viable with Pure Fiction though not needed, and an actual upgrade for AA.
To be more precise, if we are looking at the 0 cycle low cost clears for King AA, E0 Cyrene was always used until 4.1 (Pom-Pom & current AA), so in that sense it was not wrong to say she was BiS for such fights at the time of her release.
4.0 SparxieCon 0 cycle lowest cost clear for AA
Now it is true we've got Novaflare Sparkle who is able to replace E0 Cyrene for the 0 cycle low cost clears, but we needed to wait 4.1 for such clears. So once again, the people at 3.7 were not wrong to say that.
What about her now? Well, E0 Cyrene is still always good when the 2 conditions are filled, but you will find it easier (and probably better) with E0 Sparkle for the meantime.
- E2 Cyrene - BiS or not?
With that said, E2 Cyrene is another complete different issue. Regardless of your team setup, when we fix Cyrene's long Ultimate rampup (on top of improved True DMG buff), she simply becomes a BiS to Phainon, that much is indeniable. It is furthermore supported by the fact that all low cost Plight clears (or 0 cycle) will use E2 Cyrene no matter what. For MoC/PF/AS/normal AA, the endgame modes become trivial at this point.
The Infinite Ultimate basically solves almost all issues Phainon could have had before ; and E2 Cyrene even enables him to do a Double Ultimate setup which is actually important in Plight when the Confinement debuff is present.
There is pretty much no competition and E2 Cyrene allows Phainon's last slot to be very flexible. The best one being Sparkle currently, but you could also use Tribbie, Ruan Mei, or even the likes of Sunday, Bronya, RMC, etc.
Is it worth noting that it is thanks to E2 Cyrene that Phainon can have such low-cost clears in Plight, which would otherwise take 3 additional Cost without her E2 (see the screenshot).
About the sheets itself
I am deeply sad that despite everything I write about, it is pretty much ignored or not read. I always precise in my sheets several important precisions, notably athat my sheets are only 1 Ultimate Phainon rotation and not a fixed AV. This was notably made so that I can calc in a much easier way different teams at different level of investment.
The Assumptions & Rules definitely precise that it is only a Ultimate Phainon rotation, and only 1 extra turn after Phainon's Exit for Cyrene to at least "simulate" her infinite Ultimate. Regardless, I always precise that Cyrene is better in long fights:
The comparison of Cyrene and Sparkle
The post I'm answering to said the following things:
The numbers do effectively come from my own sheet. But I feel like it is not a totally honest comparison. Regardless of a character being given for free or not, this is still 7 cost, and not "6 + 1" cost.
It sheets effectively better than E0 Cyrene which is not surprising considering the assumptions & rules of my sheets. Also, while it doesn't change much, it's a E0S0 Bronya and not E6 Bronya.
However, the biggest issue is calling the following team "8 + 1 cost" when it is a 10 cost (or 9 + 1 if you really want to not count Sparkle) team by omitting Cerydra's S1 that is still a meaningful DMG increase.
And then comparing the team to a 2 lower cost Cyrene team :
which, mind you, still does not take into account long fights in the sheets.
The comparison should have been done with the following team where you can consider it as "9 + 1 cost" as you said. So I truly don't understand this.
Once again, it's when Cyrene's advantage in long fights is not taken into account. So comparing the DPAV without precising this is misleading.
The weird... agenda? against me?
This point is not really about the post I'm replying, but to some comments that are spreading... weird agendas? You can read the following:
I don't know where it is coming from but you can clearly see teams with Cyrene and without Cyrene in my sheets ; and I never said no to calc teams without Cyrene.
I can admit that I don't like calcing teams without Cerydra but this doesn't mean I won't calc teams without her either - it just happens that any team without her sheets so miserably that I don't even feel the need to calc suboptimal teams (and my sheets are not for the 0 cyclers btw). It was more some people being rude to me when asking for teams to calc without Cyrene or Cerydra.
Conclusion & TL;DR
- E0 Cyrene was BiS ONLY if you did her rotation correctly + was doing a long fight, otherwise she wasn't for the vast majority of players. Now, you'll find it much easier to play with Sparkle.
- My sheets are only for 1 Ultimate Rotation and not fixed AV so not all teams have the AV, and I also want to remind people to not use my calcs to push an argument.
- E2 Cyrene is BiS regardless but it doesn't mean you are forced to pull for her, if you don't like her or use her in another team it's totally fine.
- Some people seem to have weird misconceptions about me and I honestly don't feel like wanting to share my calcs anymore to be completely fair. I am not here to push an agenda to say "Cyrene is a must pull" or what. I just did calcs for my favorite character, but if it is to receive such comments, then maybe it's better that I stop sharing my calcs.
- Cyrene was clearly not a bait. She just added more team options and flexibility to Phainon.
Thanks for reading all this long ass post and sorry again, but I believe that this needs to be precised.
