Genshin Impact moves to fix Yae Miko after broken buffs

Yae Miko fans were excited for buffs in update 2.6, but joy quickly turned to disappointment.

HoYoLab has announced that the Yae Miko changes rolled out in Genshin Impact update 2.6 will be reverted in an upcoming patch. The intended buff actually makes Yae Miko completely useless against shielded enemies. The developer says this has caused massive fan complaints.

The short-term solution is to roll the Yae Miko buffs back to be possibly reimplemented at a later time.

“…we did not consider the effect of this modification on all possible combat scenarios during testing and verification. As a consequence, after analyzing the impact on player experience, we determined that the initial fix plan we developed was not sufficiently thorough,” HoYoLab said in an official blog post.

Regarding Yae Miko's Targeting Mechanism

Greetings, dear Travelers.

Since the Version 2.6 update, we have made a series of adjustments to the enemy targeting mechanisms in Genshin Impact to optimize the gameplay experience.

View details here:https://t.co/Jdldymc5sh

— Genshin Impact (@GenshinImpact) March 31, 2022

In her introductory patch, Yae Miko’s elemental skill Sakura Sesshou targeted nearby enemies at random. After fan complaints, Yae Miko received an elemental skill “buff” making it always target the closest enemy. After the patch, Yae Miko will return to random targeting. HoYoLab will also give out a small 100 Primogem bundle as an apology to players.

Did Yae Miko buffs actually make her worse?

On paper, changing Sakura Sesshou to target the nearest unit seems like a powerful buff. It allows players to focus down larger units like Mitachurls or Fatui Agents instead of spreading the damage across multiple units. The issue comes with physical shield enemies such as the aforementioned Mitachurls.

When such enemies move close to the Sakura Sesshou, the periodic electro strikes deal close to zero damage and also lock the enemy in place. This prevents the flowers from attacking any other units, effectively wasting their damage. The change also keeps all of the electro applications locked to a single unit instead of evenly spread throughout the group.

HoYoLab did not announce any plans to update Yae Miko in the future. It’s possible that she will receive a different, more useful buff in a coming patch. Genshin Impact characters very rarely receive buffs, with Geo archon Zhongli being the only notable case.