Epitome Invocation – April 28, 2021

I’ll get straight to it!

Weapons

Summit Shaper and Memory of Dust

2 Main reasons why it’s so good:

1. Boasts an extremely high ATK – Both weapons have an incredibly high base ATK of 608 at max level, and while that’s average compared to other 5-stars, it also boosts ATK% by 49.6%. That is a significant boost to your overall ATK stat, allowing characters to easily pass the 2.5k stat mark without having to optimize their artifacts
2. Weapon skill compliments DPS even further – While the increase to shield strength is nice (rather you can ignore it), the real star is the ATK buff. By just hitting enemies (Normal/Charged or abilities), you gain a buff that can stack 5 times. At R1 that’s a 20% increase to your ATK, or if you were lucky to get R5: a whopping 40%. Then you take into account the fact that having a shield active essentially doubles that. So at R1, you gain a 40% increase to your ATK (80% at R5). It’s quite literally insane

So it’s extremely easy to see why these two weapons can be good, but why does the title suggest it’s situational?

Because to maximize the benefit, it requires either a shielder or Geo character.

Keep in mind that the weapon skill only benefits the user, and only these characters can produce shields for themselves via crystallize:

• Geo MC
• Albdeo (Summit Shaper is extremely good on him)
• Ningguang (Memory of Dust is best in slot for her)

Otherwise you will have to force a shielder or Geo character for other characters. This isn’t necessarily a downside, as shields are extremely strong and viable for Abyss content in this game, but it can cause you to sometimes lose an elemental resonance, or force a shift in playstyle.

For some characters like Keqing for example, who can reliably/consistently run a shield-electro comp with Retracing Bolide, Summit Shaper is a top tier weapon for her. That’s not to say that the weapons aren’t worth using if you don’t want to force a shield either. Just the fact these weapons provide so much innate ATK alone is worth getting if you desperately need that power creep. However, with Eula’s banner coming around later this month, as well as probably a new weapon being released, you may want to hold onto your primogems.

Of course everything mentioned above is redundant if you’ve always been used to having a shield in your team’s rotation 😀!

Overall consensus: wait for a better weapon banner if you need a 5-star

Sacrificial Bow, The Flute, Eye of Perception, and the Lithic weapons are great, but the Lithic weapons force a Liyue-specific comp to really benefit, and the rest aren’t exactly worth the primogems. Highly recommended to save your primogems for when other (and decisively better) 5-star weapons like Primordial Jade, Wolf’s Gravestone, Amos’ Bow, or Staff of Homa come back to the weapon banner!

Or roll if you really want to collect all weapons/just want Summit Shaper or Memory of Dust. It’s your primogems after all 😄.

Hope everyone gets the weapons they want, and get lucked out! Bye.