07/12/2020
TLDR; COMPENSATION. Waiting for Xinyan's shield bug fix for more freebies.
Also to those who hate Zhongli, more TLDR; "working as intended"
Dear Travelers,
We have recently received a lot of feedback from Travelers regarding issues with the character Zhongli. The developers have placed great importance on Zhongli's performance since offline testing began. We have been collating, reviewing, and analyzing everyone's feedback and have had many discussions about it internally.
We apologize profusely for the lateness of our response, which has left a bad impression on everyone. The truth is that since the character was launched, we have been closely following the situation, both in terms of reviewing the feedback on social media and in terms of analyzing the game data on how people are obtaining, building, and using Zhongli.
We'd like to take this opportunity to have a conversation with everyone — to share our thinking on Zhongli.
When we design something, we hope to ensure that the player experience and the mechanics are as diverse as possible.
The same is true of Zhongli's design. Zhongli is defined as more of a support character, and the core of the support role is the ability to protect other characters in the Party. Based on this, we defined his two core abilities as shield creation and controlling the enemy:
The Jade Shield (generated by holding Dominus Lapidis) provides effective absorption and cover without relying on any other equipment;
Planet Befall exerts effective control over groups of enemies without relying on elemental reactions or equipment bonuses.
From a design standpoint, these two features enable Zhongli to fulfill his role as a support character, and from a review of actual game data, we have discovered that Zhongli is, in fact, effectively improving Travelers' survival capabilities.
In terms of developing Zhongli and improving his abilities, Zhongli is a character who principally receives HP-related benefits, unlike some other characters who are focused on improving DMG.
The main way in which HP improves Zhongli's abilities is by helping him to survive.
In contrast to high DMG-dealers, Zhongli's role is to provide secure and stable protection for the Party in all manner of combat environments.
Whenever we make adjustments to challenge stages, aspects of the open world, systems, and characters themselves, we always start with a comprehensive analysis of character combat statistics, user feedback, and character ethos before making a careful and considered plan. Currently, we are engaged in a deep analysis of Zhongli. In future versions, we will continue to analyze, assess, and adjust things so that all the characters you love have their roles to play and moments to shine. We can only ask that Travelers continue to be patient in the meantime.
In addition, we have discovered from player feedback that there is indeed a bug affecting Zhongli at present: After Zhongli's Lv. 2 Constellation "Stone, the Cradle of Jade" is activated, casting an Elemental Burst may not trigger the DMG boost of the Elemental Resonance effect "Enduring Rock." The developers are currently working on a fix and we estimate that the issue will be fixed in an update on 12/10/2020. Travelers will also be compensated accordingly.
Please be assured that the developers will continue to monitor Travelers’ in-game experience and social media feedback in the same way we have been doing up to now. Your generous support is our biggest motivation as we seek to continually improve Genshin Impact.