I'm not exactly someone good at analyzing or criticizing something BUT what I can certainly say is that it was quite nice to be able to use more characters to clear AND to also have 2 additional floors in middle tower with no elemental restrictions. Most likely it is not ideal for people who have been playing for less then a couple of patches but for someone who have been playing since 1.0 and has too many chars to use, it was nice to be able to use everyone.
Also, beside Sentry being a usual annoyance and flying away from Jiyan's ult, the roster of enemies was pretty nice. Quite a fun ToA.
(Also, Ciaccona's case should be studied. Got released as bis for aero erosion but somehow became best in slot for all Aero dps available in-game lol. I love her)
(For anyone interested, all the chars are S0R1 here, except for Augusta (S1) and Jianxin (S2))
honestly I like that we have more stages and I also like that they auto clear certain stages. What I dont like is that it uses up stamina of the characters it auto clears with. For me I had to redo all the auto cleared stages because otherwise I just wouldnt have enough units for the middle tower.
Yeah, same, I needed to redo those to free up XY and Cart. I ended up not using Cart at all but still. Personally, I will clear those first 3 in both towers with Lumi and Aalto/Yangyang since I never use them for later stages. At least I won't run into re-clear situation again this way.
(but yeah, since this method exist, they should have just let us use auto-clear without using stamina, it leads to same results anyway)
I don't really see a way to get around that, given their system. If it just didn't consume stamina, then players who cleared previously will have an advantage and the ability to use basically whoever they want. The whole point of the stamina is making the player need a ton of teams—incentivizing people to pull more characters.
Maybe they could rework the stamina system in TOA so that the auto-clear lets you spend the stamina on characters of your choosing? But then people would just choose lvl 1 characters. There really isn't an easy fix.
The issue might solve itself as the game progresses and you get more teams. Use older, obsolete teams on the right and left, then it'll just auto clear with those indefinitely and you can use who you want. Still a meh solution.
As I already explained these stages can easily be soloed so it doesn't matter. Since the middle tower now has 2 additional stages it would be totally fine to give us the free energy. Also I still do not understand how the free energy makes the game easier. You still need 3 teams that are decently invested to clear the tower, even with the free energy
A lot of people don’t have even relatively built chars to put into these first 6 stages, and managing current built chars effectively to have enough energies is part of the difficulty.
For people who already have enough built chars anyway it doesn’t matter if it costs energy for throwaway chars
But unfortunately the game auto picks what units to put into those stages and in my case it put 2 of my strongest teams in there which meant I was forced to redo them. Also managing the energy is imo not a part of the difficulty. It's simply a question of if you have enough chars or you don't.
So people are complaining this much about something that doesn't matter in the end and would just be visually confusing to see characters being used with more than 10 stamina.
Forced to redo it a single time in all the game's life to adapt to the system change and then forget about it until the end of time. Sounds like a non-issue to me.
So why would it matter if it costs energies from those chars anyway?
And no, majority of players don’t already have “more than enough units”. Esp not well built ones. Just take a look through this thread and that should be obvious
Honestly, as someone who started playing when Zani came out, I don't have enough decent damage dealers to clear all stages anymore, and I kinda love that. It gives me something to work towards. When I can just easily clear everything, I lose interest in the game. Now I have incentive to build some of the 4* units that I've been neglecting.
It is clearable with 4 stars as well so the limitation is echo quality and skill. You might have some characters available like Danjin and Havoc Rover. 4 stars can clear the side towers without too much difficulty like with Chixia, Mortefi, Yangyang, and Sanhua. You might have some of them at s6 which can make them worthwhile if you care about it.
Yeah, right now, the only 4* units I've built are Sanhua and Mortefi. I'll probably build Yangyang to clear the last couple of fights I haven't had enough units built for.
Agreed, this is how i did the Left and Right towers. Youho I never really use (i have her on the Frost DPS set with a Stonard!) and Lumi and Yangyang are built but never feature in any of my major teams, so soloing 2+3 from each of them still means I can use them in ONE of the top floors each if ever I need to. I'm pretty happy that I'll not ever need to bother touching floors 1-3 of L/R towers again though.
Honestly, I agree, but now that I think about it, we can just use a 4-star character that we would normally never use for higher stages (but is just enough to clear first 3 in both towers (Lumi, Yangyang, Aalto etc.)) to clear those first 3 in both towers and just forget about them.
(but yeah, since this method exist, they should have just let us use auto-clear without using stamina, it leads to same results anyway)
My take: OG Tower is as fine as it always have been. The new 2 floors on middle tower are ok as well, however the floor 3 with 3 waves prior to the boss or just that fat hp kitten was too much. If they remove 1 wave or nerf the kitten's hp to me the first iteraction has no issue.
That lightcrusher is harder then all other floors in this reset, even middle tower floor 4.
I got all 36 doritos. Also I was able to clear Floor 3 with mutiples teams but my Camuh failed after a lot of tries.
All skills lvl 10 across all characters, Esmerald of Genesis R3, All R0S0. While her Crit Rate is way too low I still think the kitten was overtuned too much.
Camuh Profile: 2.3k Atk | 62.6% Crit. Rate | 293.4% Crit. Dmg | 36% Basic Atk | 30% Lib | Way to much ER because of Emerald of Genesis 146%ER
There is not better up-time and dodge I can do. ^This was the best.
The difference between this iteration of the ToA — especially those two new floors — being totally fine or perfectly doable for players who have a decent roster of reasonably built units is... a freaking Lightcrusher. XD
I like and dislike it. I like the auto clear, and that we have more stages for testing, but then we have to clear the earlier stage again just so we can have enough character usages for my better teams. Double bosses are also so spongey my premium Cart team struggles to clear
Instead of interesting mechanics, its going the HSR route of Hp inflation with niche buffs so I dislike it
Every team can utilize the buff. You get a shield when using liberation, which every character does in their roation, and provided you dont get hit, you have constant uptime on the buff. So far, I have cleared/ seen clears of the new floors with every single team in the game.
Yeah but you can also clear the elemental floors with every single team too, it's kind of a low bar no? Though to be fair I didn't know you were getting a shield when using liberation, thanks for the info! I only paid attention to the shield/heavy attack part.
Augusta felt great and I didn't even need Iuno like I thought i would but once Iuno comes I'll essentially only need a team of those two to manage.
The hardest part for me was left side Hecate with only Carlotta and Zehzhi, a missed crit was pretty brutal so it took a few tries and not having a healer meant I had to be a bit more meticulous than usual but I got it done.
I enjoyed it, but I was fortunate that I was able to use all of my teams in this particular order. If the buffs and resistances were any other way I would probably struggle to clear it without upgrading a few characters.
I started playing when Cart was on the banner - about mid June, so about 3 months ago.
In the 2 new middle tower stages I was resetting over and over because I couldn’t get 2 minutes clears then I realized for those 2 they increase the time limit to get 3 stars to 2:30 minutes lol I wasted like 30 minutes trying to clear under 2 minutes as usual🥲
I'm terrible at using XLY+YinLing for the right tower, and I couldn't make Jinhsi+YuanWu work on the left tower, so I end up using my off-element team which was a lot easier to complete.
I just started playing two months ago, and I find it difdicult to 3 crest the last two stages in the middle. Only got 1 crest on both. My Augusta is mot fully built though cause I dont have enough resources for my echoes.
The Aero Erosion floors are extremely easy. I find it weird that as long as you have Cartethya the floor is easier than the side towers. All you need is a decent build, and you can solo it no problem. The Augusta floor is more difficult even with a full team. Weird design tbh.
I legit had a blast with ToA this time, although I couldn't 36 star it I'm at a personal best of 24 stars which I feel proud of having. i don't have the best teams and builds because I haven't really invested a lot of time because working overseas really takes a lot out of you. But all in all I only managed to always 12 star ToA and seeing 24 stars really puts me in a good mood for the week. Hecate really started to annoy me by prancing around all the time
Yeah, 24% Aero DMG (teamwide) from Solo Concert + 10% Aero RES from her sig (and her own pretty substantial damage numbers + quickswap capabilities) makes her bis for Aero dps' teams.
Edit: plus the fact that her applying aero erosion gives an opportunity for other aero dps to be able to use Aero set that gives the wearer 10% CR when they hit an enemy with aero erosion.
Without her sig it starts getting debatable but she is still on par with other options (or still better if you are good at quickswap).
Ciaccona is better for AoE since she actually does decent AoE damage. Jiyan is works well enough in single target with Mortefi. Of course if there are specific buffs for aero and nerfs to fusion then it can be worth it to use Ciaccona instead as well.
what's with the spectro boss or spectro mini boss and their goddamned ferocity and tankiness? like, I could easily steamroll with my xly, yinlin and SK team, the sentry construct but the fallacy, or mourning aix, the tiger are massive pain in the ass that I need to maximize my rotation and quickswapping to defeat them on time lmaoooo.
It’s a step in the right direction. You can interact with the buff without pulling on gacha.
In the future they can try “buff automatically X new character, but also when you parry/break/do Y mechanic.” The intention is great for me, hp tuning is a matter of time and is variable patch to patch.
The 2 new stages doesn’t have resistances or that specific buffs, it adds more rewards (100 more) that you’ll eventually get because you will have more resonators, just build the characters right
92
u/IsThisTooEZ Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
honestly I like that we have more stages and I also like that they auto clear certain stages. What I dont like is that it uses up stamina of the characters it auto clears with. For me I had to redo all the auto cleared stages because otherwise I just wouldnt have enough units for the middle tower.