An analysis of Dehya’s Defensive Capabilities in Genshin Impact
00:00 Premise
00:50 What’s Her Value?
02:06 How does it compare to Shields?
02:38 Zhongli vs Dehya
03:44 Dehya on Quickswap
05:22 Dehya on High Hp Carry
05:50 Dehya vs Layla
06:43 Dehya vs Diona
07:08 How Good is She Defensively?
08:37 Conclusion
source
She is meant to be tank when shields arent a good idea. Like uh the new enemy coming with her patch?
It's always interesting seeing people try to prop her up because of mitigation when even Kokomi was considered bad when there weren't characters that could utilize her application and she makes you basically immortal, even against corrosion. The only place you'll ever need so much mitigation is Spiral Abyss but it's a time trial so trading that much damage for some mitigation on top of her clunky kit, makes no sense. And frankly, the best mitigation is killing the thing hurting faster, if you mitigate 80%, it's only good if you still kill at basically the same rate.
dehya is one of the few characters that im willing to pull blindly. I will make her good regardless lol
That's a very generous and optimistic look at Dehya (borderline manipulative). I'll stick with my current shielders
Interuption resistance is a game changer. Just sad that we will have to wait at least until Fontaine to see Dehya's planned potential.
could have compared her defensive value to XQs
I feel like you're looking at this the wrong way. The way you're comparing the numbers is concerning. I believe you said that in certain scenarios her defensive capabilities outshine lower level shields by "effectively doubling" the on field characters hp pool.
But that's not what's happening here.
For starters, she's not increasing anyone's HP. That would actually make her useful to certain characters. No, what she's doing is absorbing some of the damage taken by your on field character. Which sounds fine and dandy until you realize that both she and her allies are STILL taking damage. Eventually, you're going to need a healer to keep your characters healthy. By comparison, the amount of damage she's able to mitigate is very much finite in comparison to a normal shielders, who 1. Isn't letting their party take ANY damage to begin with, and 2. Can refresh their shields, theoretically giving them INFINITE more damage mitigation because they're not using their health as a resource to do it. 3. Shields are still better because you're not wasting time getting knocked around. 4. You're constrained to a zone on the ground to reap the benefits.
Now I don't remember if she comes with the ability to heal herself and/or her allies, maybe then that changes things, but I still see no practical reason to pull her if you already have a good shielder like Zhongli, Layla, Diona or even Thoma. And I say that as someone who really REALLY wants to pull this character despite her glaring issues. But her kit doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment. Especially the part with her ult not activating rainswords.
Nice, my daily dose of Dehya!
(I check my copium jug and notice it is getting low.)
Everyone just came pale to comparison with Zhongli about defensive utilities fuahahahahaha
But, there's a big problem comparing her to a Shield. When a shild breaks or expire, you're at full HP and can take one or two hits. In Dehya's case, when her skill expires you're almost dead already and can't take any damage.
tbh the only way I can see dehya's defensive damage sharing buff turning out good is if they will introduce brand new enemy types(or even bosses) that deals damage ignoring every other current defensive buffs except for dehya's unique buff; but they wouldn't go that route now, right?
edit: damn, should've watched the entire vid before posting cuz you talked about this at the end and it now looks like I'm just parroting you.
Shields dont take damege during iframes since 2.1 (from patch notes)
When a character is attacked while immune to some DMG (e.g. when casting Elemental Burst), the shield's DMG Absorption will not decrease.
Isn't the cooldown another huge issue, though? Her field has a 12 second duration on a 20 second cooldown, which severely restricts that theoretical 20k effective HP.
And that's before we even consider Circle Impact
The real question is, why are there almost no leaks showing Mika or Dehya?
it seems like no one has considered a new artifact set that deals damage based on damage taken…. thats my prediction
She is designed for future character, leaker said so
I like to believe since most of the limited 5 stars end up being pretty good and maybe something genshin has planned will help her a decent bit via another unit or artifact set. However, Im losing hope. I think Genshin tried to make something different and at least right now it looks like it fails. Shame since she is a really cool looking character.Heck maybe Candace works with and can infuse her norma attack during burst causing vaporize. I think during her ult you can attack with one of the arms or something
Dehya's effective damage mitigation also skyrockets when paired on a Hutao vape team, where Hutao can self heal quite a bit. Adding to the fact that this team usually has double hydro for even more hp stacking, it makes hu tao immortal
The need of having 2 defensive unit in a game where you're fighting against the clock is a bad idea especially when those defensive unit doesn't contribute much to the team besides heal/shield/damage reduction/mitigation.
Love watching your videos before bed
An important aspect to note on why Dionas shield is quite low. Is that she also comes with a very potent healing burst. Meaning that her ability to keep your team alive is very very high even with a sub standard shield (ignoring the fact that unless I'm mistaken her energy particle generation with a sacrificial bow is one of the highest in the game)
The problem with comparing Dehya to Diona (as opposed to Zhongli or Leyla) is that Diona also heals. So if you have bleed-through damage or you're fighting rifthounds, you can still have health recovery. For a skill-issue hack like me, Diona is the best defensive character because she can mitigate damage both proactively and reactively. Obviously not something Dehya (or anyone besides Noelle) can do. So if we're going with the pure copium of hoping Dehya can be used as a defensive support, she definitely does not beat out Diona.
So Dehya is basically a shielder but instead of summoning a shield, she becomes the meat shield.
I think, you have a mistake in your argumentation. Dehya does not just delete that halved damage. One half takes your active character, and other half takes Dehya herself (as far as i know). So her "shielding" ability is limited by her own health pool. And some enemies LOVE to hit like a truck. And as for the final nail in a coffin – wolves still exist. And this ugly bastards could be countered ONLY by healler or Noell
Just use Omanthus Wi-
Other than dehya shielding being trash cause you still take dmg so you need a healer also there is a high cooldown of 6 seconds where you can just get hit you also gave super low numbers to the shielders example diona shield is 12k layla is 20-24 and zhongli is 28k
Why do people always forget that Zhongli's shild also fortifies every time it takes damage for 5 stacks of 5% increased shield strength?
I am just saying that Zhongli's defensive ability is unparalleled in this game nothing comes even close and Dehya's def ability is way way worst than his no matter the HP pools of the characters you are protecting.
The next best thing is Xingqiu's + Beidou dmg resistance added together for a different kind of defense against extreme dmg numbers (one shots) or even dmg over time like bleed mechanics.
The problem with Dehya's defense is that she dies off field, it would be cool if she had an off filed dmg role like Beidou to go along with her defense abilities you could also pair her with Xingqiu then and go to town but the thing is why should you pick her over Beidou for this role ?
One team im really looking forward to trying is a reverse melt swirl team.
Ganyu, Bennet, Kazuha and Dehya(Use Zhongli instead of Dehya currently)
Will be nice to have a new challenge to face if Dehya struggles to do damage. Might make the game for fun 😉
Look how they massacred my fav character. After playing genshin for almost a year, I can say with confidence that they can't properly design and balance a character which ends up making characters too strong and others with problems and niches which requires specific characters or constellations to be fixed. TLDR we just want a balanced character that anyone can play without worrying.
If she will be played in defensive role, I think her being pyro limit her comp a lot. It can ruin a lot of reactions.
A good video, with a great general grasp on the defensive aspect of her utility.
Some things to note however:
Her mitigation is not true damage reduction, moreso damage redirection.
This is a very important difference, as redirection to dehya would also imply that her personal health is a finite amount that will eventually deplete, bringing me to the next point.
On top of having a finite amount of health to absorb damage, she also has an extremely limited amount of time to do so. Her uptime is 12/20s, meaning you only have a "doubled" health bar 60% of the time optimistically (this is not including how rotations will never be truly off cd for Dehya, eg a Double hydro Hu Tao team will force it to 12/22).
It would be misleading to calculate effective defensive contribution through uptime here, but a shielder like zhongli will always have greater defensive contribution.
She can definetely be subbed in for a shielder however, but only under the assumption that a defensive roleplayer were to already exist.
For example Melt Ganyu could use Dehya over Zhongli in a reverse melt burn team, if for whatever reason zhongli were to be required in another team.
Thanks for the video. This is well explained. Also so many comments on an 8.7k video. Really nice!