Genshin Impact's Candace Is Useless - Is HoYoverse Ruining 4-Star Characters?

Since Genshin Impact’s inception, 4-star characters have been a staple option when building the perfect groups to conquer various dungeons and quests. For the most part, earlier-released 4-star characters like Xingqiu or Bennet have remained a cornerstone across most team compositions.

Even multiple years after debuting, these characters are still prized and considered valuable additions to any team build. That said, newer 4-star characters released across Inazuma and Sumeru’s debuts have seemingly dwindled in meta strength and optimal skill sets.

Most of the newly-released characters, especially earlier this year when Sumeru finally launched, have become quickly obsolete and, frankly, absolutely useless. Because of this problem, players have become disappointed with every new banner. But is this a fair assessment?

New 4-Star Characters In Genshin Impact Seem Useless

Before raising your pitchforks to defend your favorite characters, could you live without using Xiangling, Sucrose, Heizou, Beidou, Xingqiu, or Bennet?

Not a lot of players could. And although it may be unfair to compare Genshin Impact’s initial launch of 4-star characters, it’s fair game to say every other character past the last few Inazuma updates has been somewhat useless and subpar.

For a couple of examples, Collei, Genshin Impact’s initial Dendro character, debuting with Sumeru, is basically a downgraded version of the Dendro-built Traveler.

Dori, the Electro character normally used for supporting, is pretty frustrating to play and doesn’t come close to the skill set of Kuki Shinobu. And Candace. Well, Candace is probably Genshin Impact’s most useless character by far.

The 4-star character buffs normal attacks, but for players with Yun Jin, there’s no need to fit Candace in most team compositions.

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In saying so, there aren’t many normal attack-focused builds, either, besides Yoimiya and Ayato Kamisato, so builds with Yun Jin alone are quite a niche composition. That said, most players know that if HoYoverse truly wanted these newer Genshin Impact 4-star characters to do well, they'd add some more eye-catching skill sets.

For example, instead of Candace boosting normal attacks, why not switch it up and allow the character to enhance plunging or charged blows? But instead, these newer 4-star characters feature reused skill sets, with mostly all of them being subpar and poor.

Balancing Genshin Impact Seems To Involve Creating Terrible Characters

So, if Genshin Impact’s newer 4-star characters are slowly becoming more and more irrelevant, does this mean players should stop rolling on future banners? That’s a hard question to answer, knowing the many reasons at play. 

Considering the many characters HoYoverse makes and dishes out, it appears increasingly difficult to balance all of them. And as Genshin Impact receives more additions, managing and balancing these 4-star characters becomes even harder.

Some players argue that HoYoverse’s decision to make newer 4-star characters utterly useless is a direction mainly to control the game’s balance and meta while generating immense profit through charming visual designs.

If every banner consists of an overpowered character, Genshin Impact probably wouldn’t be the most fun game to play, knowing the challenge of clearing dungeons, quests, and exploring Teyvat has been taken away.

Although it’s necessary to have some form of power creep, some suggest too much of it would ruin Genshin Impact’s gameplay experience. Hence, it definitely seems somewhat difficult to navigate these issues.

That said, there are only guesses and vague arguments floating around about whether or not HoYoverse will take Genshin Impact’s upcoming patches and introduce better 4-star characters. In the game's current state, it certainly needs that breath of fresh air and possibly one or two banners worth of great 4-star characters.

In saying so, it will likely take some time before that ever happens, noting suggestions pointing toward HoYoverse trying to balance the game as best as possible. But, until then, only time will tell if these potentially better 4-star characters will live up to players’ expectations.

We would like to thank TenTen on YouTube for their detailed rundown of the issue with newer 4-star characters in Genshin Impact. Feel free to watch their full video above.

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All featured images are courtesy of HoYoverse.