Zenless Zone Zero - ZZZ

[KrayZ33]

Anyone playing?
The game is seriously fun. I started on release and I absolutely love the way the story is told. The comics are awesome whenever they are there, and the cutscenes are great.

Characters are dripping in style, and it's just such a huge upgrade to Genshin and HSR (back when I played both still)
Hopefully the soundtracks keep up in the future as well.

my favorite character so far:





I don't think I have to explain the ASSets which are used in this game are phenomenal.
Hey and you can date your characters too... kinda. At least I went to watch a movie with her and had a dinner too, we even held hands, which is basically the same as being married.
Heck, even though I signed something to not speak about it... I even watched porn with her.

And for good measure, a sweet fanmade video:




and from DJ Legend Tiesto:

[Ryllharu]

Zhu Yuan is very good (an actually normally adjusted cop without a tragic backstory. Works hard but clocks out on time), but Nicole is hard to best in terms of characterization, as is Ben the Scary Construction Worker Bear who is actually an accountant and his boss Koleda.

The Ether characters are certainly some of my favorites.

My single favorite though? Terrifyingly powerful (in lore) Alexandrina "Rina" Sebastiane, the maid who plays like Psycho Mantis.



The bears are really funny in the game. They're literally talking bears that still act like bears who wear clothes and do construction work. Activates some Richard Scarry book memories for me.

[shinta|hikari]

How is the story of this game? Is it just battle after battle type? Or is there actual exploration?

[shinta|hikari]

I tried this out and got Grace on my first 10 draw.

Wakiness.

https://ibb.co/y0qTQqH

[shinta|hikari]

Who is your main team?

Mine is Nekomata, Piper, and Lucy.

I also have Grace, Soldier 11, and Lycaon, but don't use the latter because he is a dood.

[Ryllharu]

Who is your main team?

My primary currently is Zhu Yuan, Nicole, Anby.

You do need two teams. I haven't been able to clear Shiyu Defense 10 because I didn't have any true DPS before Zhu Yuan.

Working on a second, which will be Jane, Rina, Grace for the Disorder composition.

Third will be fire/physical based, assuming I get Caesar and Burnice. I've been building up Koleda recently and have been working on Lucy for a long time. Piper was my old DPS before Zhu Yuan.

I have wolfguy, but since I don't have Ellen, there's no point in running ice comps.

[shinta|hikari]

Are you F2P?

I was thinking of making a fire team with Soldier 11, Koleda, and the bear. Is that one any good?

I'm mainly aiming for waki characters. Unfortunately, all support characters have sleeves...

[Ryllharu]

F2P, but I might have to whale a little to get both Caesar and Burnice.

Soldier 11 is the DPS you need for the team. Ben and Koleda are a little redundant, since they both operate in the role of building daze rapidly. You can use both and run chain attacks more often, or replace one of them with Lucy if you have her (or anyone else that might boost attack or cause debuffs or generate anomaly for Disorder procs).

[shinta|hikari]

I have Lucy, and that's great because I prefer using female characters in virtually anything. Lucy's batting combat is also pretty cool. I love it when the final blow freeze frame is her batting a bear into the enemy, like a walk off home run pose.

Thank you for the advice!

[shinta|hikari]

Also, did you guys know if you go to Piper's Equipment screen, then to Skills, she has a third post with raised arms? Some characters seem to have extra poses specifically for when you do this.

[Ryllharu]

Lucy's batting combat is also pretty cool. I love it when the final blow freeze frame is her batting a bear into the enemy, like a walk off home run pose.

Lucy has some of the best animation details which are normally too fast to catch unless you're focusing on her.
- Normal parry she gets caught by her pigs and pushed back upright
- Strong parry she gets pushed into her pigs and then they all fall over like a cheerleader catch




edit:

Ben and Koleda are a little redundant, since they both operate in the role of building daze rapidly. You can use both and run chain attacks more often

I take part of this back, they're not redundant at all. Try the event trial where you use S11, Ben, and Koleda as trial characters and trigger buffs on Defensive Assists.

Holy. Shit.

[shinta|hikari]

Man, her animations are awesome, and the bear aspect is cute.

What makes that fire team good? I don't really understand a lot about the combat because everything has been easy so far. I'm only at level 38.

[Ryllharu]

Are you playing on Challenge mode and pushing either Hollow Zero or Shiyu Defense? It will get a bit more challenging towards endgame, as does trying to hit S-ranks on higher-level resource runs.

What makes that fire team good is their ability to very quickly cause Chain attacks over and over because they generate a large amount of Daze (the yellow bar below an enemy's HP, which trips stuns (goes gray), which starts chain attacks) and being a mono-element team, also cause a fair amount of Anomaly (circle to the right of enemy HP bar) which triggers Burn in their case which is especially great for human enemies because it interrupts their attacks.

Using the switch button when the yellow cross flashes from an enemy's attack triggers a Defensive Assist. Koleda generates a decent of daze when she does a Defensive assist, which costs two slots on your switch UI element. Ben is a Defender, so his Defensive Assists only cost one slot, and they also generate a significant amount of Daze (about as much or more than Koleda doing her stun attacks properly on 2nd/4th hits). Those assist slots refill when you trigger a chain attack.

So if you're good with the Defensive Assists, the end result is triggering chain attacks repeatedly, refilling the assist bar over and over, and leaving the enemy stunned a lot for Solider 11 to capitalize on with her Burst and specials (she needs to be on field the entire time when she's capable of doing fire attacks) at the right moment when the enemy is stunned and taking extra damage and racking up a lot of anomaly even though she's an attacker.

I don't blame you for not understanding the combat. It is very poorly explained in game and all over the internet on the AI copy-paste guides.

Once you know what you're doing, ZZZ combat is super fluid and extremely satisfying.

[shinta|hikari]

Holy fucking shit, I didn't even know the enemies had indicators for those things. I also didn't know that daze causes chain attacks, or that defensive characters have that benefit from Defensive Assists. This game can be so deep for a gacha game.

Thank you for all this. It will actually make my main Nekomata, Piper, and Lucy team better because I understand the mechanics now.

I have not been doing any of the challenging content yet because I've been focusing on the story and agent stories, as well as mats for skills and disc drives. Once I finish Rina's story and the ratgirl's story, I will do the harder content, which will likely require me to use these mechanics to the fullest.

Have you tried playing Wuthering Waves?

[Ryllharu]

I do not and will not ever play WuWa. Not to go full doompost, but I don't expect it to last much longer based on its trajectory.

[shinta|hikari]

I played most of its content until it got repetitive and switched to ZZZ. Both are great IMO, with Wuwa winning exploration and combat vs ZZZ winning style and creativity. Both have relatively weak stories.

I usually only play gacha games for a month or two to try all the content and move on. The main draw is to get to know more characters I can collect as waifus. They always have great character designs.

[shinta|hikari]

@Ryllharu - My new team might be Koleda (when I get her, 30 draws to 300!), Grace, Soldier 11.

The plan is to use Koleda to stun, then drop Grace in to shock, then switch to Soldier 11 to apply burn and disorder. Her attribute bonus will kick in because the enemy is stunned. Does this make sense?

[Ryllharu]

Eh...I don't think Grace gets you much in that composition, and further, the rotation order you're proposing will hurt you immensely.

ZZZ excels in mono-element comps the most. Repeatedly build a single anomaly type, damage reinforces itself, probably a weakness for the enemies you're fighting, and the bangboo will compliment the team's make-up, etc.

The stun window is also limited and where you'll be doing the majority of your damage. You want to stun, buff, and DPS in that order through the chain attacks and land on the DPS in most cases. There's variants of that pattern that either include specific units to boost the DPS or they remove one party member entirely to trigger the bangboo more often, but let's not get into that.

Disorder comps are also a feature of using one or more Anomaly units as the DPS instead of a DPS. The goal of a disorder team is to constantly proc individual anomalies that also pair well (this gets complicated). Not all of them work together (freeze notably doesn't).

Grace is very good at building electric anomaly, though she's slow to build energy and it takes a lot of field time for her to build up before she is able to start going. You don't want her in your stun window.

Soldier 11 needs to be on field to the maximum extent possible once she starts doing fire damage, and ideally the full duration of the stun window.

If you still want to use that comp, you would want to spend a lot more time with Grace on field at first, switching back and forth with Koleda to start to accumulate daze, have Grace trigger Shock (full electric anomaly) with her stacked EX attack, back to Koleda to trigger the stun (though which one starts the rainbow stun and which one triggers the chain attack matters less), switch through them during the chain attack to land on Soldier 11 and have her DPS through the stun window which would trigger a disorder at some point, but potentially not as reliably as you want before the shock duration ends.

It doesn't really have a great flow...

[shinta|hikari]

If you still want to use that comp, you would want to spend a lot more time with Grace on field at first, switching back and forth with Koleda to start to accumulate daze, have Grace trigger Shock (full electric anomaly) with her stacked EX attack, back to Koleda to trigger the stun (though which one starts the rainbow stun and which one triggers the chain attack matters less), switch through them during the chain attack to land on Soldier 11 and have her DPS through the stun window which would trigger a disorder at some point, but potentially not as reliably as you want before the shock duration ends.

This is great information. Thank you for the advice on how to use the comp. I will try it out first. For one thing, I want to avoid letting Grace rot since she was my first S draw. The other reason is obvious.

A completely Sleeveless team would be awesome.

[shinta|hikari]

The Koleda, S11, and Grace team is working out surprisingly well.

Koleda and S11 swap around to build stun and fire damage, and then when the enemy gets stunned, S11 wails on it while it burns, then near the end, I swap in Grace who at this point has full charges and dump them all for Disorder burst damage. That's basically the cycle. Grace barely gets any up time and is basically a mechanism to trigger Disorder.