So vars. You owe me a hundred bucks.

never thought id see the day that a character i actually use becomes the target to one of these videos 💀

This is gonna age like the xiao video, blades gonna get 3 signiture best in slot supports and will deal bladillion damage.

The problem with blade is he needs a harmony or abundance character that buffs you based on how much health is healed or taken away or how much they get hit,hopefully we get one when we go back to the lufou

Blade will never die , quite literally

Remember guys, he doesn't start fights he ends them.

"We love you Blade" we all say in unison

My immediate reaction to the notification was “NO VARS NO”. Anyways, in for the ride as usual

He wants people to saviour paradise for him

Blade is legitimately one of the most fun characters to play in this game, and I really hope he sees a comeback with future units and I’d hate to have such an enjoyable play style left in the dust as a result of bad luck

Just imagine how OP blade gonna be if furina actually get in star rail

Personally I think this should've been a what happened to video and not a why no one plays. Blade's a victim of circumstance, atm it's mainly just the fact that every other DPS archetype (DOT, break, nihility, FUA, and hypercarry) has fully realized top tier supports, but there isn't anything like that for HP scalers like there is in Genshin. Making this a why no one plays implicitly places Blade around the same tier as Physical Trailblazer, Arlan, Yanqing, and Herta/Himeko before Pure Fiction, and that just doesn't sit right with me at all because Blade is still completely viable and I'd even say he's still a GOOD unit, unlike any of those previous ones. Would've made more sense to me to make this as a what happened to video because like Welt and Seele, Blade started out exceptionally strong and then ran into circumstances that caused them to fall off in most players eyes. However, just like Welt and Seele, Blade is still completely useable for most content without the absurd amount of investment it takes to make characters typically put into why no one plays episodes even function properly in the first place, let alone actually be somewhat good, and I think it's a disservice to the man when there's already an established type of video for "this character was really good, but due to circumstances is still a strong unit, just isn't as popular anymore, why is that?" instead of throwing him in with the trash. Why no one plays characters like Yanqing Phys TB and Arlan are "fundamentally weak characters that don't have a workaround for their many inherent weaknesses without insane investment to even make them playable" whereas what happened to are for characters like Welt and Seele that are "strong characters that got pushed out by circumstances BUT are more than capable of coming back and being strong depending on new units or a certain Moc Buff" (Welt Sustain, Mono Quantum) Of those two options blade is significantly closer to the second. Also, Jade is coming out soon, who has a hp drain for an ally on her skill with a big spd buff and gets more FUA attacks from allies that can hit multiple enemies, so yeah, Blade might already start coming back if her hp drain counts as a separate instance of damage to both double blades FUA output and then in turn give Jade more FUA's.

Holy cow what power creep did to my boy???😢 still my go to wind dps

Remember, Blade is a glass cannon.

Blade was my first limited 5-star, he may not be the best but he is fun as heck and love his theme. No regrets at all

Making this video before Jade's release is very reminiscent of Himeko WNOP before Pure Fiction's release lol

Blade's E2 is such a waste, it only gives 15% Crit Rate when it could've been so much more... His biggest issue has always been the lack of consistency in getting his stacks off, so if his E2 was able to split DMG from allies to him instead, he could do damage cuz of his FUA, and be nearly unkillable due to constant heals.

Finally got Jingliu so that ultra comfy ice/wind comp has been very fun to run as of late

"He (argenti) sorta just came outta nowhere and didn't stick around all that long" meanwhile, argenti constantly appears wherever the plot needs him to, and just automatically does whatever the plot needs him to, like the elder scrolls or chaos emeralds.

honestly, the main issue with blade is that theres no support unit that has true synergy with him; if they add supports that buff hp scaling or constant hp changes (its a possibility since firefly has a similar situation with her hp percentage changing pretty often) it would be a possible buff. that, or adding a planar/relic set that focuses on hp changes would buff him similarly to how jing yuan got buffed that one time via relic set. also i just have to say; he does go really well with fu xuan? she doesnt take away all of the damage, so his FuA trigger still fills while the hits he takes just hurt less (hell, this has saved me a few times when his hp got dangerously low). maybe its just bias, but imo this should of been a 'what happened to' video... especially since theres no mention of jade in the video, who is coming very soon and might potentially buff him due to her gimmick. his situation honestly doesnt feel as dire as, say, yanqings for example; blade just lacks proper supports, theres honestly nothing wrong with his kit. i personally still use him in MoC at least (usually on the same team as dhil funnily enough). atm hes a great sub dps if you can manage the rest of the teams sp efficiently enough, and is one my comfiest characters to grind with. genuinely one of my favourite characters both lore wise and playstyle wise.

He was my first true main and I still hold him in high regard because he carried my ass on Swarm Disaster which he thrived in due to him being hard to take down. Although yeah of the Xianzhou trinity of Destruction units, he aged relatively poorly. The lack of dedicated supports became a detriment and not to mention all Destruction units succeeding him were overtuned AF despite having different niches to fill.

With Jade on the horizon Blade might get his “dedicated support” since she has some HP manipulation and offensive support capabilities. So he might have a chance of coming back.

I remember a comment from a year ago saying that Vars will make a "WNOP video about Blade" and Vars made a deal with him saying that if it does happen Vars has to give him 100 bucks LOL Edit: it was 11 months ago, the comment back then was made by Dooood24

Once an actual hp buffer or an aggro buffer, the tables will turn. Blade finds power in moving as frequently as possible, so aggro buffing directly converts it into more fua and ultimate damage.

this breaks my heart to see my main finally get one

woah now this was unexpected. i thought he might have a place for dual dps JL team comps. but yeah i can somewhat see it, powercreep is nuts these days. hmm... i wonder if what could save blade from his despairity be a buffer that buffs from hp drains?

”I live in an eternal midgatory, and other destruction characters, they are good at making it for me”

Honestly, Blade is kinda easily fix by just removing his atk scaling, buff his hp scaling and replace the A4 trace by giving him an aggro increase (like by 500%)

The thing with Blade is that he's a Wind dps coverage, and we only have him + Dan Heng on that specific role, so he has his own niche there. The problem is whether it's better to run him over brute-forcing comps (mono quantum or self implant dps like Boothill and Firefly). Also in order for Hoyo to release more HP scaling support they'd need to release more HP scaling dps first, which will also diminish Blade's value even more.

In my opinion this video should've rather been a "what happened to..." instead of a "why no one plays..." because the only significant Issue blade currently faces is that, unlike other dps', he doesn't have a specific dedicated hp scaling or aggravate support. Though a victim of circumstance as well, being released before jingliu and dan heng il, I would argue he is still a good unit, just not top tier like before powercreep. A lot of ppl also skipped him to pull for other characters like Daniel, Jingliu, as well as Ruan mei on his rerun. He's niche but he does clear a lot of the main content, and it's also easier to build him since he only scales off hp.

It’ll only get worse for Blade when they inevitably release another Wind DPS since that’s one of his few remaining boons rn

The fact that this is a E6 Blade I'm watching doing 40k dmg basic and 100k follow-up 😭

Never thought I'd see Jing yuan someday overtake Blade. Oh how the tables have turned

If they buffed blade: When using skill he is more likely to be attacked for 4 turns(with effect resistance and damage reduction) fua stack from 5 - 4(e6 4 - 3) When blade uses Fua he gets a hp heal over time(3 turns)

Blade can make use of sparkle its one of his best teams called Unlimited blade works. Combining Bronya and sparkles turn advances would normally be to sp consuming but with blades low sp consumption he can make us of this combination to do 4 turns in one cycle with 0 speed in a team with 161+ speed sparkle and 160 speed bronya. Plus do to bronya and sparkle spamming their skills its stacks sparkles talent quickly and permanently.

You can’t make me quit this character… ever

yeahhhh i definitely think we could see Blade make a comeback as soon as we get more supports that cater to HP-scalers or can manipulate a teammate’s HP in exchange for dmg buffs… honestly i’m surprised we haven’t gotten any supports like this already but i’m sure it’ll happen eventually 🤔 well at least for now he’s still got the duo carry team with Jingliu

I pulled for blade in 1.6 as my first 5 star then lost my ruan 50 and i don't regret it He is good for any starter in turn based games and we blade mains are still patiently waiting for his supporters

I can see them adding a harmony unit that drains hp in exchange for buffs, kind of like how the new destruction march 7 or jade works where they mark a team mate to receive some sort of effect, ideally the harmony unit also adds extra hp through some trace, and gives a non-attack based buff like res pen, def ignore, or dmg boost. Essentially the unit takes a chunk of the marked team mate's hp and gives the entire team that buff

Hurts to see him in here. Gonna save all my Jades from now for that one support that could speed him up, damage him, and make use of his follow ups.

My first divergent universe run was with blade . He can do everything with so many buffs. Erudition path elation path propagation path destruction path hunt path. In the new game modes specially being versatile with path combos I think holds most weight and he’s really good his dps goes through the roof in DU with all the buffs he can use. Moc he still is strong and I use him whenever I see wind weakness

(he does have that driver's license tho!)

ontop of him needing more specialized supports that we dont have, another thing that could be cool is seeing something like a relic set that can scale off hp and have an effect based off hp loss, could work for him and maybe also arlan?

Blade saved my bacon when he came out, nearly all of the luofu enemies are weak to wind and I didn't have Sampo. Nowadays I use him in simulated universe with Jingliu to get stacks faster. But Black Swan is way faster at killing enemies in a dot team than anything Blade can do.

I’m interested to see if jade will help him. Since it was said that jade’s contracts take hp away from the unit it’s on when they attack.

why i dont play blade: i dont have him i didnt play during his 1st banner and went for silverwolf then kafka (who strangely enough went linear in terms of banners) and now that i have ruan mei jingliu and huohuo i feel i finally have a team i can use him on

Also I want to ask, what is the music Vars use in their videos? I really like some of the music I hear in these videos.

I think that with the leaks of Yunlid LC i think he will get a major power spike, and it should also be noted that Jade has a HP drain mechanic

When Seele disappear among the sea of butterfly only makes me realize how gross is the power creep in Star Rail.

I still use blade a lot even though I got Firefly and Dan IL recently. His dps is definitely not comparable to the current meta units, and I do think he got outshined pretty badly. However, for me he's just very comfy to use in story quests and farming

I didnt bother getting him during his release banner because I was getting burnt out during that time and was taking a hiatus from the game, I came back in 1.4 and after using him as a support character I ended up really liking him as a character and felt fun to use him, in 1.6 I pulled for him instead of ruan mei, couldnt get his sig and was stuck with secret vow s2, built him for a month or two and he's really fun to use. Sadly after a while I realized how behind he was compared to my E0S1 JingLiu and even support E0S0 JL, later on I decided to just keep him in my 2nd MoC team after getting acheron and building a full team for her (pela sparkle fuxuan), now in this current patch I managed to get RM soft pity with guarantee and my blade has been benched since. Im really sad how I knew it was inevitably gonna happen at one point and sometimes I even kind of regret pulling for him but even now he's still the most fun character Ive ever played in the game. I hope hoyo does something in the future that will make him relevant again 🙏

Vars says Sparkle doesn't work well with blade but I guess he never heard about the unlimited blade works team (Blade + Bronya + Sparkle). I guess the argument against this is that it takes up some good supports but we have enough team archetypes so you can play other teams with other supports, i.e. FuA with Robin, Break with Ruan Mei.

now I don't have blade but I think he will definitely see a lot more play if hoyo releases a dedicated support that perhaps allows him to trigger his fua far more often, among other things. just like with acheron's new best friend coming soon™

Aw man, that's my main. Time to watch I guess.

If star rail starts to implement more hp manipulation characters like how they made firefly drain and heal herself, i believe there is a good chance they will release planar ornaments to complement the new characters which would in turn also buff clara and depending on the bonus also be a good pick for jingliu. I dont think they would release a 4pc for that though since the current ho set is very efficient to farm being with the messenger set and its probably only going to be a small difference because of the crit raye from hp set

Gallagher is a solid healer for Blade. Heal on atk mechanics similar to Luochas, cleanse on his skill at e2 and turn advance mechanics on his ult for emergency heal/cleanse.

As a Blade main, I feel like he doesn't have his best supports yet unlike many other characters

Not to mention we don't have any suitable light cone for him Only 1 4star and barely do anything for him If you don't have his 5star light cone

Imagine a character like Blade in Genshin where the character would deal more the more he got hit and would heal dealing additional damage. I would pay a pretty penny for character like Blade to be in Genshin Impact

An Idea of a support that would boost not only Blade usability but also clara (and to an extent Yunli even tho she is not out yet), the first gacha game I played was saint seya awakening, that was also a turn base game, and by far the most used unit on that game for a long time was a unit that could link your entire team, and everyone would share the damage, not exactly a Fu xuan, as the damage was shared with the whole team, not mostly directed for one small girls shaped impenetrable fortress (you can think as a weaker version o SImuluated universe blessing), and there where units that could cut one character from the team off the link, so if you where to hit the isolated character, he would take the full damage. Now imagine a support that could link the whole team, so when someone gets hit, everyone takes a share of the damage, it would not only help trigger Blade's FUA but also constantly Clara's.

As someone who plays blade i think his biggest future proof is the low so usuage I feel if they ever release a sp hungry support who is broken (maybe a reverse daniel use 3sp to grant massive buffs) blade would be able to use them so well and become super good again Supports are the life of a carry

I believe that many here have already pointed out, but Blade urgently needs a Support that buffs him based on lost and/or recovered HP. The only characters that currently help Blade are Bronya and Ruan Mei for the DMG/RES PEN buff, and Jingliu and Jade for ally HP drain. We need a support that does both, as Blade ends up having to share space with another DPS to constantly activate FuA, which inadvertently makes him the team's Sub-DPS. Blade depends on mechanics that don't yet exist in the game, in my opinion he was launched too early, just like Jing Yuan, if he had been created nowday, would be much stronger (like 4 stacks by standard, higher scaling, more buffs from the kit itself, etc.)

I would love a Halloween themed healer who gives a lot of health but also takes health form the team

As someone who’s been playing hsr since it came out I will admit Blade has somewhat fallen off in my DPS lineup since I obtained Acheron and the Kafka/Black Swan dot comp. As it stands, I can see 2 routes for increasing his value by either making him a tailored support (like Furina from gi) or another destruction character with purposeful synergy as opposed to Jingliu. For option one there would be an abundance/harmony unit that can convert excess healing into extra max HP or give other characters a dmg increase directly proportional to how much HP they have or lose/regenerate. Option two gets more experimental with a new destruction character that specializes in draining the HP of a selected ally that can be stacked all on one character or spread out across the team. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume they use enhanced basic attacks like Blade, their skill is like his where it is what enhances their basic, and they use minimal SP. Instead of damaging only themself or all characters on the team at once, their life drain can be selective. Even better, they can do this life drain a total of five times before they can no longer use their skill, so each dmg instance will count on Blade’s follow ups. To make this synergy even more apparent, said destruction character could even give the target ally they drain HP from some dmg reduction, increase their max HP, and convert some of the HP drained into a bit of extra energy in exchange for the target ally.

Unlimited Blade Works is really good, tho. It even got upgraded with Robin now.

blade didnt die, just the wind weakness in general

Does Blade's low sp consumption make him the ultimate enabler for a Sparkle/Bronya combo? I would imagine that with Huo Huo for constant cleanse and ER boost, he would sap his own HP fast enough to do serious damage, plus HP boots would boost his damage and survivability while the action advance keeps him constantly attacking.

He was my first 5* and I got his signature LC too. I also prioritized him over Ruan Mei because I thought I need DPS more than support😂. I don't regret pulling for him, it's just ashame that I have no use for him anymore.

this is absolutely outrageous

Blade is good but I don’t really use him anymore

What Blade needs is a support Imbibitor Lunae. Someone who consumes more sp for bigger buffs. He's the dps who consumes the least amount of sp in the roster, so even if this support is viable with other units they'll still be best suited for him.

can you put link in description for the usage rates ty

That one pinned guy from “How Blade is OP Without Powercreeping the Game” was right 😭

Thats cope. Blade has got rly good supports already. even with sparkle bronya and ruan mei hes mid. theres hardly gonna be supports that do much more than that for him. hp buffing is nowhere near as good as action advance and he already gets a huge dmg% boost from rm and cdmg boost from sparkle. not to forget that lynx buffs hp and increases taunt value. theres nothing blade doesnt already have in terms of supports. This is not a xiao situation where he got faruzan and xianyun. this is nothing but copium. u can get e2 sparkle e1 rm and e1 s1 on blade for vertical invest but overall u get much more value on other chars. blades multipliers are unfortunately the problem and nothings gonna fix that

I wound up pulling him by accident when he realised, becasue I was trying to get as many Sushang copies as I could, and did so many pulls on his banner that I got first Clara (so win) and then him, all without getting a single Sushang. And then they gave her out for free a patch or two later. That having been said, now that I’ve built him up, I do use him all the time. Well he’s the only 5 star wind DPS I have, to the extent I’m building regular Dan Heng (though to be fair he’s mostly done) just so I have a second one. I got Blade’s Lightcone on his re-run and for a while one of the best teams I had fully built consisted of him, Loucha and his fellow Stelleron Hunters. A highlight of that team is that I used it against Sam in the story mission, and for the early clear of Sim-Uni 8/9 (the one with Sleepy as the final boss. Another twist is that Trend has also been reversed becasue I’m now using my Firefly team with Lynx to farm Kafka’s relic domain in the divergent universe.

I didn't really expect a why no one plays for blade. I was actually currently looking forward to his next rerun with Jade coming as it seems the two are going to work decently well together

I dont know, I just ironically combine him with Jinglui then let her mechanic trigger blade follow up in follow up team. Seems good in simulated universe with follow up or destruction path.

Blade feels like we just dont have the right character in game to make him work right. He feels like they put him out a way before the characters that make him work are ready. Like genshin and how many characters launch and feel clunky then half a year or year later the missing character that makes them work comes out.

Quick question from the live stream Jade does buffs while draining HP of ally she gives her skill too would that help him?

Imagine if they add DHIL as a harmony or nihility character ,Blade would love that so much because of his small sp usage

I feel the second that we get a support that buffs you based on max HP or HP loss Blade will become a lot more relevant again. I still personally use him a lot and he still does a shit ton of damage even with a f2p LC(i do have busted supports tho) But he has fallen off a bit but he is definitely not a bad character.

Doesnt Jade have some mechanic tied to buffs in exchange for hp? I forgot the exact details from the livestream. Would that work?

From what I do know, there is the upcoming unit of Jade, whose Skill buffs a unit at the cost of them consuming their own HP. This could work for Blade as a support, but since his Enhanced attack already drains some of his HP, unsure if that would be of much help. Additionally, rumored from leaks that the signature Light Cone for the next upcoming Destruction unit is said to have a massive Taunt buff on it, more so than Gepard's signature LC, meaning that it could work well on Blade to have more Taunt value. Granted, these are for things later on rather than immediately, so only time will tell how those work for Blade Mains

i remember thinking of an abundance emanator kit which had an enchance which consumes the selected characters hp for more damage and having a follow up to heal character whos hp has been consumed multiple times

in light of this video, it reminds me of nikke and how there are some units who buff characters and play around their stackable buff counts. i think a nice somewhat niche character would be one like that, increase dmg based on amount of stacks needed, decrease the amount of stacks needed, help attain and/or maintain stacks.

there is a nishe where blade will probably never (or rather not for a long time) be replaced, and that is aoe against enemies that apply dot's. Once his turn starts every single dot counts as a seperate hit towards him, combine that with an action advancer/speed buffer and you have 3-4 waves cleared per cycle taking only his followup into account bonus points for dot pure fiction, in which enemies move more often

I don't have blade but i always thought he is really cool. Also what about Jade? Does her HP drain does work with Blade and if yes, do you think this could boost him? My guess is, it does work but it wont be enough to make him significatly better.

So what he needs is someone who has Jingliu's enhanced skill team hp drain on demande or as an independant action (follow up), who can also give bonus max hp... quite the paradox, but not impossible ig...

Man i've been following u for quite a while on your genshin, league and star rail content and i think it's the 1st time i get a why no one plays on my main

There's a reason they gave us a cutscene of Jingliu killing Blade. He has been the most interesting case study IMO for quite some time, especially because I never had him. I "tried him out" with that one event dungeon we had where we had the trial characters. Like you said, Luocha is the ONLY best sustain for him, but Gallagher could also work. I have a feeling there WILL be someone in the future who could support him, but that's also likely to come with new 5 ⭐DPS's who can use HP-based scaling mechanics. As crazy as it might sound, it might be possible to make a full "HP scaling team" in the future. The best team for Blade, currently, is the Jingliu-Blade dual carry. A no-sustain version of this team can in some circumstances funnel Tingyun/Bronya buffs into Jingliu and let her be the primary DPS while also draining everyone's HP allowing Blade to get the most mileage.

Maybe Jades HP drain mechanic and SPD boost can help him getting his follow up around every 2nd basic

The ideal support for Blade (and Arlan) would be a harmony character that takes away your health, increases your taunt, and increases the damage you deal. Something like a 5 star electro harmony character (since that is the most toxic combination i can think of)

The problem with Blade niche kit is that hoyo might avoid giving support for him because his archetype support wasn't mean anything to the whole roster, so we might need to wait to HP-based kit to be easily accessable (multiple character with HP based kit) so it is worth it for them to release the support.

For the follow up you can use both blade and jingliu as a double dps team

Ironic that Blade is still one of my most used units despite having an E2 Acheron, DHIL, and now Firefly. His simplicity and consistency as well as having true aoe makes me still use him for whenever I have no idea who to use. I even throw him at wind weak sides to this day despite having Kafka+Black Swan since, again, he's so consistent and versatile. Also, with unlimited blade works setup he absolutely still has a place imo

when Jade's added to the roster we can see some new team for Blade, especially in Pure fiction since both Jade and Blade have good damage for multi enemies and Jade can easily make Blade activating passive every 2 turns. And later on the new light cone that increase agro for destruction units, these can improve Blade, not necessarily mean he becomes new meta, but it's worth a try

I had just played Bladie last night in Divergent Universe because I haven’t played him in many months and now this video comes out 😔

maybe his niche is that he doesn't need any support? i know that sounds like bull but perhaps he could function similarly to harmony tb's super break dmg but as a playable unit. not there for the team comp necessarily but for extra dmg with little sp investment

Blade's meta is like how his life works, not really dead but not quite alive either. Tragic

I hope for blade mains they get some support with the return to the Loufu. Though Jade debt collector does have a stat decrease effect so hopefully that buffs him.