#but the only other imaginary character is welt and at this point i'll get limited 5*s faster than permanent 5*s

[nohkalikai]

see i wanna pull for blade bcs hot traumatized character w decent straightforward kit and spider lilies but i wanna pull for imbibitor lunae bcs i think his kit is very cool.

[wormytoast]

i've been thinking about the state of male characters in star rail so i guess i'll just shit them all out here

firstly, majority of male units aren't bad, but they don't really compare to their female counterparts (i mean, jing yuan vs acheron? come ON) big issues are type+path, role, and powercreep. i guess i'm gonna order this chronologically.

1.0 - standard

to start this list we can look at the standard 5-stars. gepard, yanqing, welt. 2 ice, 1 imaginary. at launch, welt was the only imaginary unit (how naïve we were). one thing i think is important to acknowledge is that most, if not all, standard 5-stars are designed for early- or mid-game, not endgame. this is why units like bailu and yanqing find so much use in young accounts—they have access to buffs that a young account has a hard time coming across. however, by the time you get to endgame, there are new challenges that they cannot rise to. that being said, some still work very well, namely himeko, clara, and bronya, albeit the latter two less so now that they've been powercrept.

how do the boys fare? well... yanqing in particular was designed with early game in mind, which means he already falters in a developed account. he is essentially useless and does extremely small damage compared to other hunt units. welt already required hyper-investment at launch—he still performs well once he reaches that investment, but it's an extremely high hurdle. most people don't use him anyways due to later imaginary dps showing up. otherwise he's used as a "sustain", which is also incredibly hard. gepard fares the best mainly because of his path—he's 1 of 3 5-star preservation units. that being said, he's the last one you'd use.

so in summary: yanqing is completely useless without a triple harmony team; welt requires absurd levels of investment for either dps or sustain builds; and gepard, while good, doesn't compare to the monsters that are fu xuan and aventurine.

1.0 - limited

now we get to the limited boys. jing yuan is lightning erudition. at release he was pretty good but dropped quickly. he has been indirectly buffed by subsequent harmony units, but that being said, he still requires lots of investment and those specific harmony units to reach his full potential and even be considered competitive with the other lightning dps.

funnily enough, we don't have a lightning female unit that is a traditional dps path. they are both nihility! and of course, both are fan favorites with meta-changing kits. kafka enables dot teams while acheron can stomp moc and as and even brute force pf. compared to these two, jing yuan falters considerably.

1.1

luocha, imaginary abundance. at the time he was a huge upgrade—the first limited abundance! game changing, even! as it stands, he is still good, but he also doesn't enable specific comps except for maybe blade. essentially the swiss army knife of abundance units—he heals and he heals A LOT, so he's a great pick for comfort, but as the game matures he will definitely be the "i don't have anyone else" pick rather than the ideal, such as huo huo for dot and argenti or lingsha for break teams.

1.2

blade... oh blade. wind destruction. everyone knows he's been left for dead in a ditch. does his job but very few harmony or nihility units can dig him out of his grave. our other 5-star wind dps is black swan, who is basically the damage of dot teams. there's also feixiao, who will most certainly become the Dps Of The Month for hoyo.

1.3

here's where things start to turn around—at a price. dh:il is a great imaginary destruction dps at the deficit of your skill points. he was immediately powercrept by jingliu, a dps that, at the time, could brute force literally any content.

why has dh:il been able to stay consistent in the meta while jingliu has fallen off? for one, he later received a premium support, sparkle, to combat his skill point usage. secondly, jingliu heavily prefers moc due to being a damage-per action unit—moc has been actively avoiding ice weakness for a while now. the third reason i'll get to later.

1.5

argenti, physical erudition. the first bearer of the "good in pf" curse. similar situation to jing yuan—requires lots of investment and specific supports. however, unlike jing yuan, there are few units to powercreep him, as the only other physical dps are boothill, clara, and yunli (clara 2.0) who do much different things than him.

...however, due to his identity as a pf unit, he tends to falter in other scenarios unless hyper-invested and played optimally.

1.6

dr. ratio. hunt imaginary. very good at what he does. still meta and the current dps for fua-based teams. all he needs are some debuffs and a decent harmony unit (or topaz) to pop off.

2.1

aventurine, imaginary preservation. the first limited preservation to provide shields, and on his skill and fua! a very solid sub dps. works incredibly well in the fua team with ratio.

2.2

boothill, physical hunt break-based unit. THE boss killer. currently meta. however, he was immediately powercrept by firefly with superbreak. there's a chance this could be like dh:il and jingliu, depending on where the devs take the game.

2.4

jiaoqiu, fire nihility. the first male support and first male fire limited 5-star. he can...function in teams. premium support of acheron and can work as a ruan mei replacement in dot teams. at present the devs seem to be trying to forget him.

what's all this anyways?

one of the biggest issues is type diversity. you'll notice 4 out of 9 limited 5 star males are imaginary type. out of the other 5, 2 are physical while the other 3 are fire, wind, and lightning each. we have yet to obtain a limited ice male unit. this is compounded by role—6 out of 9 are dps, 2 are sustain, and 1 is support. the only choice of meta male units is between physical and imaginary units. jing yuan and blade are hard to use in anything; argenti and boothill do fine but are for pf and as respectively. finally, dh:il and ratio have to compete for the spot of Flexible Imaginary Dps.

so—why has dh:il been able to stay relevant while jingliu fell off? it's because half of the limited males are imaginary. they're incapable of putting the type to rest because they keep introducing new male units who are also imaginary. this is opposed to jingliu, an ice unit, a type which has not had a unit since 2.0—5 versions without an ice unit, including 2.5.

on the other end, by 2.5 there will be a female dps for every type except imaginary, which will eventually be filled in by rappa. the enablers of specific niches are also female—kafka for dot, topaz or jade for fua. ruan mei heavily buffs break and sparkle buffs heavy sp users.

i forgot how i was going to end this. anyways, consider both the type diversity and playstyles of male and female units, and you will see how lopsided the game is