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BFD666
Alright, tcg talk time. Apologies for the long post but Oh Boy Do I Have Thoughts. Zhongli is mid in the tcg only because geo as an element is mid.
The tcg is very reaction based as each deck is about constantly activating a certain elemental reaction, and crystalize, aka the only reaction geo can make, only gives one shield point (-1 dmg of all kinds), which doesn't lend itself well to what I like to call chaining reactions.
For example, one deck I like to play is Shenhe swirl, in which Shenhe applies cyro to an opposing character, and then using either Xiao or Venti, I set off the swirl reaction. Shenhe increases cyro dmg of all kinds, which means I can consistently deal a lot of cyro and anemo dmg because I'm constantly swirling cyro.
A lot of decks in tcg are designed like this because it allows for a very fast and large amount of damage to be dealt.
There are decks that are designed to last as long as you can, aka stall decks, but it's a bit harder to play those ones since they depend on setup and if you get unlucky with dice rolls or your starting hand your opponent can quickly take you out. The ones I see that pull it off the best are Ayato + Itto + Kokomi, because of the healing boost hydro provides, and Itto's increased geo dmg providing shields to himself while keeping up with the amount of damage needed to be dealt to prevent the opponent from outlasting you.
Zhongli is by far the best geo support in the tcg right now, since he's the most consistent applier of geo dmg in the entire tcg. Paired with characters like Yae Miko, Xingqiu, Chongyun, or Fischl that consistently apply elements that can react with geo, he can make shields for your team which if you were to pair with characters like Kokomi or Noelle, would make your team very, very hard to kill.
Or at least in theory anyways. Reality is a lot different.
Because of how small of a shield crystallize makes, this is negated with the amount of damage decks that are built around fast damage dealing can do, which is to say most decks.
Why would you try to make a shield team when you could just shove a bunch of healing food and healing items into your deck to attempt to stall out your opponent? If geo was buffed to give, like, 2-3 shield points Zhongli would become an unstoppable monster because you would not be able to kill anyone on his team since he'd be constantly adding 4-6 extra hp onto his allies.
Zhongli deck wise I would probably do Zhongli, Chongyun, and Noelle. Get Chongyun's frost field up asap to convert all your dmg into cyro dmg, and then get Zhongli's pillar up to provide shields to Noelle who, when paired with her talent equipment card, will heal whenever her shield is up. Use the geo resonance to increase the strength of the shield, and maybe throw in some cards to help get the geo dice you'll need for those two?
Sorry about the long post, anyways
tdlr:
- geo is Not Great in tcg at all
- Zhongli is the best geo character in tcg
- as a result zhongli is mid
. I like exploring as well as I recently started maining my C0 Yelan!!!
