We already knew Dehya was bad, but fans have had enough after a week of disappointing revelations about her kit. On the whole, the Genshin Impact 3.5 update is charming players with its squee-worthy character interactions in the Windblume Festival. Yet in the background, the #FixDehya movement simmers to a boil.
The Genshin Impact 3.5 update dropped late on February 28, 2023. Dehya, already a highly anticipated character based on her appearance and personality alone, was finally up for her debut banner. It wasn’t long after that players discovered she was underwhelming at best and downright broken at worst.
The long list of complaints includes her inefficient Elemental Skill, her Elemental Burst that cancels when hitting stationary objects, and the fact her damage multipliers pale in comparison some of the game’s 4-star characters. It just doesn’t seem fair if you spent your hard-earned Primogems (or cold, hard cash) on a 5-star character.
A few days later, the #FixDehya hashtag started trending on Twitter. At this time of writing, it’s still trending. Many supporters of the movement are sharing the same #FixDehya graphic, which includes four key fixes that they want from HoYoverse:
- Increase her skill hit rate to once every second (similar to Raiden), so she can Burgeon effectively
- Increase damage mitigation to 75 percent and reduce the cooldown of her self-healing to 10 seconds, so she becomes a much better “damage sponge” and never dies off-field
- Make her Burst attacks normal attack triggers, so her Burst works with Yelan, Xingqiu, C6 Fischl, etc.
- Increase her multipliers to be more in line with other 5-star characters
Like I mentioned in an earlier article, many of these criticisms stem from Dehya’s lackluster Elemental Skill and Burst and her struggle to trigger elemental reactions. Other major complaints include the knockback on her Normal Attacks, which inconveniently push enemies out of reach, and the fact that her attacks can auto-lock onto a bush instead of an enemy.
SaveYourPrimos, a Genshin Impact information-sharing account, also tweeted in support of the cause with a graphic of how to use the “Feedback” option in the game for Dehya. In a separate thread, they wrote about how they’d made a habit of joining “mains Discords,” Discord servers dedicated to specific Genshin Impact characters, to watch how players' thoughts about a character evolved from beta to debut. It’s typically a time to rally hype behind a new character. Meanwhile, Dehya Mains seemed to only despair with each new bit of info about their cat-lady Claymore wielder.
“This is the first time we have ever seen a dedicated Mains community collectively give up on trying to make a character work,” SYP said of the Dehya Mains community.
It isn’t simply about the numbers. Sure, Dehya doesn’t do as much damage as a typical 5-star. (In fact, Dehya’s Level 10 Normal Attack does barely more damage than Dori’s Level 1 Normal Attack.) It’s everything else behind the low numbers, like Dehya Mains struggling to find any competitive team where she would work better than other 5-stars or even 4-stars. Elemental reactions are hardly optimized with her slow fighting style, and her Burst doesn’t work with many teammates’ element-infused abilities.
At least Qiqi, another 5-star that players tend to poke fun at, works as a support unit. Dehya barely fills her role as a damage dealer and tank. She isn’t just low damage, but low usability overall.
Organizers of the #FixDehya movement have encouraged fellow players to send respectful, specific feedback about the character to HoYoverse. You can highlight whichever points bother you most, like the four points circulating in the #FixDehya movement, and paste them in the complaint. Some fans have even advised adding that the poor experience has affected you and your friends’ thoughts on spending any more money on the game, or playing the upcoming Honkai: Star Rail.
Hopefully, like in the case with Zhongli, HoYoverse will respond. Inverse reached out for comment but didn’t receive a response at the time of publication.
