The Zhongli buffs keep on coming in Genshin Impact

The free-to-play open-world RPG Genshin Impact is one of the biggest hits of 2020. Since its release, the developers have done a great job at making sure the most valuable characters — those of the five-star variety — are worth getting. Considering how hard they are to roll for naturally, and that most players only end up getting them through the game’s pity system, it would suck to pull a five-star character that, well… sucked.

That is until poor ole’ Zhongli. As one of the more recent additions to the game, Zhongli is a five star character that has been… underwhelming to say the least. The miHoYo team working on Genshin Impact has already acknowledged Zhongli’s issues and committed to significant buffs for the character. After a news update today on the game’s main website, however, it looks like those changes will go even further beyond.

In the news update, miHoYo acknowledges several key sticking points that factor into Zhongli’s lack of viability. First off, he is a very weak support character, especially in co-op. Secondly, other Geo-based support characters are more worthwhile than Zhongli. Almost every other Geo-based support character just brings more to a team. Lastly, if your single-player mode party doesn’t have a lot of characters that are compatible with Geo, he isn’t even worth putting in your squad.

Upgrades across the board

To help remedy this, miHoYo is making a big change to Zhongli’s Elemental Skill “Dominus Lapidis” (Hold variation). All enemies within range of a character protected by the Jade Shield will have their elemental and physical resistances decreased by 20%. This effect will not stack. It should make him far more valuable in single-player and co-op, whether he is in a Geo-based party or not.

This is in addition to the previous adjustments made to the ability. Those previous adjustments include several revisions. If the maximum number of Stone Steles have not yet been reached, it will create a new Stone Stele. Also, the physical damage and elemental damage absorption values will adjust from 250% to 150%. This new change will be included in an update to the version 1.3 test server today, December 29, 2020. You can find the full news update on all of the Zhongli buffs on the official Genshin Impact site.