In addition to meticulously researching character build guides to feed my OCD (not to mention validating my less-than-optimal team-building decisions because my self-esteem is high like that), I occasionally take peeks at the statistics of Spiral Abyss team compositions. Looking at weapons, I typically see four/five-star weapons perfectly suited to complement their respective characters: Hu Taos have their Staves of Homa, Sucroses use their Sacrificial Fragments...es (plurals are hard, okay?), Kazuhas carry around Iron Stings. So far, so expected. And then I got to Albedo, and here's what I saw.
If you too wish to feel validated/heavily criticized about your team's performance in the Spiral Abyss, feel free to let peer pressure get the better of you here.
If you haven't figured out the anomaly in Albedo's weapon selection yet, allow me to spell it out in big fat red letters for you: that weapon over there with the 92% pick rate (90% as of me writing this blog post) is a THREE-STAR SWORD known as the Harbinger of Dawn. That's right baby, the five-star Chalky Boi cares not for your fancy Mistsplitter Reforgeds and Aquila Favonias, because as far as he's concerned, his weapon is essentially a catalyst (which is funny because it's not a book) that he will almost never brandish in actual combat.
But why IS a three-star sword among one of Albedo's best weapons? Well. Noelle mains, here's your time to shine: remind me again why your claymore-wielding maid-knight most likely has a Whiteblind equipped? One word, ladies and mentlegen: Defense (typically shortened to "DEF"). Under normal circumstances, Defense is a highly reviled stat due to endgame content requiring you to quickly nuke enemies above staying alive (it also doesn't help that most damage-over-time effects deal percentage damage instead of a flat number, making DEF largely relevant against some game mechanics. Looking at you, Sheer Cold). That's not even getting into the fact that enemies have almost no problem eviscerating your health bar regardless of your DEF, and it just so happens that Artifacts love giving you HP and DEF bonuses, especially flat numbers. You know, just in case you weren't already well-aware enough of this game's gacha nature. Needless to say, DEF Artifacts are gonna be pretty damn plentiful in this game because you're meant to grind an obscene amount of time so the game can "gently persuade" you to spend real money to refill your Resin. Because of course.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so goddamn true. Also, can we just eradicate flat Stats on Artifacts from existence already?
Enter the anomalies: characters that don't require stacking nothing but Crit on their gear in order to do well. I know. Crazy idea, isn't it? Examples would include Barbara, Zhongli and Diona (whose abilities scale off of HP) or on the DEF side of things, Noelle and Albedo. Seeing how much those crummy Artifact Domains love nothing more than to give us a big fat Artifact with a defensive stat bonus, farming for these hipsters' gear tends to be less of a headache; if you get "unlucky" and get an offensive set of substats on your trinkets, all the better for your other characters. My Ningguang would benefit greatly from the offensively-statted Artifacts I get from my Noelle runs, and if I happen to get a "garbage" DEF piece, my Noelle's wishes will have already been answered.
Seriously, if Albedo and Combat Maid didn't exist, name a single character who'd actually benefit from this absolute travesty of an Artifact.
I should probably preface this with a disclaimer that I do not personally have an Albedo. Hell, Albedo mains are rarer than freaking Weapon Billets considering how often I run into those guys in co-op. It's such a shame too, because from what I've heard online about Albedo players, they're apparently super chill people. I suppose when you main a character whose banner was treated like the Genshin equivalent of Trotsky's removal from that one Stalin picture, you've gotta be a pretty humble dude. I suppose this also translates into the Albedo gameplay experience; this guy is basically the literal embodiment of "one man's trash is another man's treasure", to an even larger extent than motherfucking NOELLE, which is really saying something. Noelle has the excuse of having one of her best weapons being the four-star Whiteblind, while ultra-gigachad Geo Blossom flower-boi-chan here has a THREE-STAR WEAPON as the preferred stat stick for a good 90%+ of his users. Exactly how many five-star characters in the game can say the same about their kits?
I suppose Zhongli could be considered a fellow contender for this elusive title (some people have found success slapping a Black Tassel on him. Sure, the weapon's passive is super situational, but the HP bonus alone is reason enough to put the weapon on him), but even he'd benefit more from a five-star pokey stick like the Vortex Vanquisher or the Staff of Homa. Four-star options would include the Crescent Pike or an Energy Recharge weapon like the Favonius Lance or Prototype Starglitter. But back to my original point: see what I mean with Albedo being the perfect representative for figuratively turning "mold into gold"? Three-star weapons are typically used as fodder for better weapons, mind you. FODDER. And here Albedo is, making optimal use of the supposedly trashy sword better than most other characters can use five-star equipment.
I originally set out to have this post's central topic be about Albedo's underrated kit and his abilities' amusing interactions, but writing it has given rise to another matter I've been waiting for an opportunity to discuss: the fact that I love how certain characters can bring relevance to even the most obscure equipment in the game. Albedo-gushing aside, let's go back to that point I made about the Black Tassel finding a friend in our meteor-chucking amigo Zhongli. Lemme hit y'all with a little something to chew on: before Big Dong Zhong pulled up and took Teyvat by storm, you could probably count the amount of people who unironically used Black Tassels on a single hand. It simply wasn't practical to equip a Slime Hater spear (with an HP bonus as its attached perk, no less) on your typical spear-wielder, but what if you learnt that a certain polearm-user could make his devilishly durable boulder barrier even MORE devilishly durable with the microscopic investment (well, microscopic compared to the ridiculous leveling costs of higher-tiered weapons at least) of a single three-star weapon?
With all this being said, let's take a moment to appreciate all those characters that deviated from the norm to give our "useless" equipment an actual practical use besides fodder for our better gear. Zhongli (and to a lesser extent, Barbara, much to the chagrin of most players) gave HP Artifacts and Weapons a character to call home (wish I could say the same for Diona, but for some wack reason the only HP-statted Bow is a woefully underpowered 3-star with an equally underwhelming passive bonus compared to her preferred Sacrificial Bow), a recent patch helped Anemo Support characters turn Elemental Mastery from a dump stat into a force of nature, and of course, who can forget the entire reason why I even went on this tirade to begin with: DEF-scalers, namely Noelle and Albedo (as for you, Xinyan, we'll need to have a talk later. I ain't exactly in a great mood to open the can of worms that is the forgotten Fontaine fighter right now). Every single one of these characters take unconventional, oft-disregarded stats and converts them into powerful buffs, and that is an admirable trait for a character in this game to have.
I recall commenting on a Kokomi video something along the lines of "thank Dog Kokomi has a negative Crit Rate, because it's nice to build a character who you don't have to obsess about Crit over." And wouldn't you know it, one of the replies I got in that thread was some self-obsessed smartass going "AcKcTuaLly, it's been proven that her best build focuses on Crit", and when ordered to present their evidence, they slapped an entire Excel spreadsheet's worth of numerical data in a subsequent reply, because they were either expecting anyone to actually go through two pages' worth of damage numbers and go "damn, this mofo a genius, they's opened me eyes to the awesomeness that is Crit Kokomi! Now lemme boot up the game and tirelessly farm Artifacts for months until I inevitably get 100% Crit on my Hydro waifu and finally get to play her the CORRECT way!"... or they were just trying to look smart by slapping a bunch of numbers to make it seem like they knew what the hell they were blabbing on about without doing any actual research. Judging from the tone of the comment, I'm heavily inclined towards the latter. Also, aren't characters like Kokomi so appealing because I can have a more relaxing experience slapping those 5* "useless main stat" Artifacts I had lying around in my inventory on a character who actually benefits from that shit? Even in an alternate reality where this genius was somehow right, why don't you go build a normal DPS with your Artifact luck? I'm pretty certain there're tens of other characters out there who'd be a better fit for those ungodly Crit stats than Hydro Catalyst Lady numero tres over here.
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