Epitome Invocation – March 17, 2021

I’ll get straight to it!

Weapons

Elegy for the End

3 Main reasons why it’s kind of bad:

1. Energy Recharge as a stat – I’ll start with the obvious: the weapon can be great for supports as ER% is always great for faster rotations and burst spam. However, of the 4 bow “supports” we have (Venti, Diona, Fischl, and Amber), Venti and Diona don’t really need ER due to their E spam and neither do Fischl and Amber due to their low costs. For DPS like Ganyu and Childe, ER% may be useful for burst DPS but essentially useless compared to CRIT%/CRIT DMG or ATK% for main DPS slotting
2. Elemental Mastery as a selling point is useless – The 60 EM to your character and the 100 EM + 20% ATK offloaded stats to the rest of your team may seem great, but it’s not really beneficial for most cases. EM can allow a character to hit extremely hard if they have a reaction based team, but a measly 160 EM won’t add up to much as the scaling is % based (not flat). So unless the characters already have a ton of EM to begin with (either through gear or innate stats), or you force an EM mule like Sucrose, it’s essentially a useless buff. Not to mention taking Sucrose with TTDS will most likely perform much better than forcing bow slot
3. Weapon skill’s odd cooldown – 20s before you can stack and use it again (so realistically 21-22s) is an oddly matched timing for most bursts in this game. Most bursts sit BELOW the 20s CD, and if you have a remotely well geared characters or team you’ll have your burst back up right for use as the CD ends. Waiting the 5-6 additional seconds just to wait for Elegy’s weapon skill to proc again before using bursts is not optimal at all

There is a saving grace for Elegy though: the offloaded 100 EM + 20% ATK can be decent for your team if you already have a bow user OTHER THAN your main DPS (referring to Ganyu and Childe). As mentioned before, the 100 EM is practically useless if you don’t already have some EM built, but the 20% ATK can be a nice passive buff — this is only more pronounced if you have DPS that can benefit from vaporize/melt damage

The weapon itself isn’t too shabby for burst DPS Ganyu and Childe either, but unless you’re a diehard fan for them probably better to still stick with something like The Stringless or Skyward Harp for them

The Alley Flash

2 Main reasons why it’s good:

• Boasts a crazy high base ATK for a 4-star – 620 base ATK at level 90 is unheard of for a 4-star sword. The EM may not be the most tantalizing thing about it, but that high base ATK is an extremely straightforward stat to boost damage
• Weapon skill is just straight damage lol – At R1 it grants a 12% DMG increase, which rises 3% per refinement (so 24% DMG increase at R5). Pure DMG increase means it affects everything from normal attacks to skill/burst damage etc… It’s a pretty hefty increase of damage as long as you don’t get hit 🙂

At first glance, this weapon is practically made for Bennett. The high base ATK alone is good enough, but having an additional DMG buff + EM for his Q/E spam could be quite the suitable replacement for Festering Desire for those who missed the event

If the weapon DMG snapshots, it could also be great for characters like Traveler, Xingqiu, Albedo, and Kaeya as they all have lasting abilities after they swap that naturally help boost DPS output

The only massive downside is that taking damage disables the effect for 5s. This may not sound too bad but in cases like the Abyss (where every second matters), you need your supports to quickly swap in to use their abilities, and swap out. Them accidentally taking damage after swapping in can seriously ruin the damage potential, or worse your rotation

Wine and Song

Main reason why Wine and Song is good is due to it’s ATK buff. However, it’s just for 5s and to proc it again requires a dash. This doesn’t sound too bad with the stamina consumption decrease, but you would be spamming dash frequently to keep the ATK up.

It’s important to note that ATK buffs aren’t as significant as DMG buffs, and you’ll need to conserve your stamina for abusing i-frames to dodge, so it’s a fairly mundane weapon

Also seems like the weapon’s description changed over time. Originally, the weapon skill used to be similar to that of the Lithic weapons – except based of Mondstadt characters rather than Liyue

My overall advice is to skip this weapon banner, as it’s not exactly promising compared to other weapons

However, that’s just my input on the weapons. There is still the chance to get Skyward Blade, which is an extremely potent 5-star sword that practically works on any sword user. Albeit it is a 50/50 gamble on which 5-star weapon you get from the pity, but if it’s something you want you’ll have to risk your primogems anyways

The other 4-stars are still really good! Dragon’s Bane is great for characters like Hu Tao and Xiangling, who can really benefit from the EM and damage bonus. Favonius Warbow is great for Venti and Diona, who love to absolutely spam E and Q, and Greatsword is a decent alternative for characters like Xinyan and Chongyun who could really benefit from the additional ER

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