Define "worth pulling", it's not like she's bad or people don't get S-ranks with her. Same with Hugo, SAnby and others.

But Shungu is all but guaranteed to be OP on purpose. If that's all you care about, save your pulls for her.

I've got a Vega 8 and am able to run the game just fine at 40-60 frames, and it runs well enough that I'm even able to multitask with a browser open. It's playable at max graphics but I wouldn't recommend it.

Two areas, Lumina Square and Aerospace City, are notorious for stutters and frame drops, but based on what I've seen that seems to affect a lot of people, even those with decent hardware. The start of every new patch also performs a lot worse, but I'm not sure if that's exclusive to me since I've not really seen anyone mention it happening to them before.

Dual-channel helps, I tried the game before upgrading my RAM (same as yours) and it was basically unplayable before.

https://preview.redd.it/7ipu08rccp7g1.jpeg?width=1412&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0f098dcc478085d2b29c9cd73fb758ae5b6174a

Yes. Get a standard character instead of a limited character the next character you get is guaranteed to be limited, and it goes over from banner to banner.

Hellfire Gears, and if you reached that CR with 2pc Woodpecker a 2pc Swing Jazz/Moonlight would be better instead, more RPS is better than more DPS.

Gears. She wants ER.

[deleted]

The one I've been happiest with is Yixuan M1 the free ult for every farming run is convenient when I'm being lazy.

Prob sup ones, anything with RES Shed is massive, normally they M1 (Yuzura, Astra, Dialyn, Lucia, Trigger), Some of them can be used together so both M1 shed will stack. Another char to invest like this, is any of the Titled chars (Miyabi, Shifu, New girl next patch) till M2… They are already strong and reliable at M0, getting them to M2 make them last even longer, and even more if you got the M1 for they dedicated supports.

According to this calculator, if you are starting from 0 pity and no guarantee on either banner, it's 88%.

https://hsr-warp-calculator.vercel.app/?game=zzz#google_vignette

https://preview.redd.it/onzqvy0ppn7g1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=572b72458e3e05f86097ce970250993f610157ee

It's Star Rail but works the same. Add in the refunded residual signals+the pulls we get next patch and it's probably 100%

• Your rotations generally look correct for M2, with one problem I'll come back to at the end. Try to feed Manato a few more parries but this is pretty minor as you still got your first two ults and those are the tougher ones.
• Your Manato build looks good except for the obvious problems (mindscapes, wengine) which you have no way to fix right now. I think Pan maybe wants kaboom or something (just for ER) but idk?
• Your team investment is really bad. Lighter is the only premium team member here and he barely counts given his AA isn't active. I think you need a properly invested Dialyn or something on this team at minimum if you don't want him to feel bad, especially given Manato himself is only M2W0.
• You want 4 stuns vs WH. Your first stun is maybe a few seconds late but it isn't a crisis (this only matters for second stun decibels but you got ult at second stun on time so NBD), your second stun is fine, maybe a second or two late but that's just pull RNG. Your third stun is about 15 seconds late, which means you have no time for a fourth stun at all. I think a fourth stun would've been 20k here even setting aside other comments.
• Your big mistake with your rotation is not having EX up for stun. This isn't always comfortable and is usually not as important, but ideally on most weeks you want to do Chain -> cancel -> EX -> Chain, which basically just buys you a bit of free spare time in the stun window and stacks Yunkui Tales faster. However, this week it's really really important to get this right, as you have 40% fire damage bonus locked behind EX special. The ideal rotation is EX -> swap to stunner -> stun -> Chain -> cancel -> swap -> Chain, but if you do Chain -> cancel -> EX -> swap -> Chain it isn't the end of the world.

I think you can get to 20k if you fix the EX special and the fourth stun (with EX/ult on at minimum stuns 1/2/4) but the team investment issue is also gonna hurt you more every week until it's addressed or pulls even perfect gameplay below 20k.

Miyabi is a crit-scaling Anomaly main dps, so you probably aren't too far off if you played her as a crit dps. What mindscape is Miyabi? If she's M2+, you could keep playing her that way and be reasonably close to optimal play.

If she's less than M2, she benefits more from Disorders, which means she needs a Disorder partner, ideally another Anomaly agent, like Yanagi or Vivian. The sub-Anomaly would take Lighter's place. Are you familiar with Disorder rotations? If you are not, here's a 2 minute video guide. Here's a longer and better made guide.

Once you take Lighter out, Lucy is no longer a good Support for Miyabi. Do you have any S-rank supports you could use instead like Astra or Rina, and if not, you can use Soukaku or Nicole?

For Miyabi's build in the current meta, she should have more PEN and PEN Ratio. If Miyabi does not have her sig, consider equipping her with Fusion Compiler and change disc slot 5 to PEN Ratio. Maybe even switch your 2p set to Puffer. However, don't sacrifice too much Crit Rate by making these changes. You need at least 68% on the stat sheet, but the closer to 80% you can get without going over, the better.

I only prefarm before I pull a new agent. Once I have the agent, I get all the rest of their S-rank discs from rolling in Bardic Needle. If it's a brand new disc set that is designed to be used with the new agent and there was no opportunity to prefarm, I go straight to Bardic Needle.

In Bardic Needle, I'll start with any-slot discounted 10-pulls to fill in any gaps in main stats. That usually gets me 4 out of 6 slots pretty cheaply. The last two are usually slot 5 and either slot 4 or slot 6. For those remaining slot main stats, I use selected slot rolls at double price until I get a decent disc. I trash most of the rest of the discs I roll. For slot 5, I don't waste a lot of 10-pulls, since the odds are against getting what you want, so I use up to 3 Tuning Calibrators to get the right main stat in slot 5.

Once the initial main stats are good, I go ahead and level all the equipped discs up to max level. That's a workable build for the agent. I can fine-tune their substats later, using Routine Cleanup, over many days or weeks. Don't skip on leveling equipped discs just because you might get a better one later -- you are CERTAIN to get a better one later, but who knows how long that will take? It could literally be months. I'm still trying to get a better slot 6 for Lucia, as one recent example. Leveling mats for discs are not that hard to get.

I have a large bank of gold currency so I immediately roll 300 discs when I get a new dps and then farm that domain for a chance at upgrades, for the other support disc, and to replace the initial disc spend. I generally just stay on the cleanup until I want to farm something else.

I generally take every 2 crit disc to +9 to see how it rolls and every disc with an empty slot and a crit sub goes to +3 to see if it rolls into the other. I go through once every 2-3 weeks or when I finish farming and roll the discs in one big batch using the filter options to select the subsets I care about. I don't even look at most discs.

My personal rule of thumb is:

• Only farm disks in routine cleanup if both disks are useful to me.
• Roll without targeting a slot if I don't have +4 useful subs on disks 1/2/3, as otherwise extra disks 1/2/3 are always relevant. Try to prioritize rolling for disks that I don't want to run routine cleanup for
• Once I have +4 on disks 1/2/3, or really need to replace a specific disk, roll while targeting that slot (4/5/6)
• Use tuners whenever I feel like it for disks which I would otherwise target-roll for, or when initially building a character and just trying to get something viable online
• Never slot target 1/2/3 under any circumstances

One is likely to be in a later banner than the other. We'll know more about timing in Friday's livestream, but roughly speaking, bunny will be in January and AoD might be in February, assuming AoD is released in the patch (2.6) after bunny (2.5). Since there are 3 members of AoD, it's not clear if they will cram all three into a single patch, making one an A-rank or doubling up an S-rank banner for the first time, or if they will spread AoD over two consecutive patches.

Yuzuha,this team as a whole would perform on Void Hunter level with that setup

Yuzuha no question. Any anomaly DPS is replaceable, whereas Yuzuha raises all of them to new heights. You already have two anomaly DPS (Jane/Vivian) so you don't really need more unless you just like mixing and matching or unless you're concerned that they're getting dated.

Lightstream Notes has some voice acting.

Neo Golden Mecha has a few lines during certain fights iirc.

The other 2 have none.

What's happening when you try? If it's using her own ultimate, it's one of the hollow zero gears.

Mostly just the 2.x faction ones, 3 copies if you want to activate their additional ability with only one faction member if it matters.

Depends. I heard Robin and Snap get good benefits from additional copies. Miss Esme, Birkblick and Mercury reduce their agent requirement for their additional ability from 2 to 1 with 3 copies (2 extra past the first one).

You can build and play either Nicole or Astra to be a main dps. I've even solo'd Astra in Hollow Zero with all her gear. I suppose you can do that for Lucia too, but most of her value comes from her Aftershocks, so it's kind of a big sacrifice to on-field her all the time.

Nicole is by far the easiest to main with the least sacrifice for doing so, so go for it.

And they are all Ether Attribute, so that's something.

While they may not work as well together, they are all great supports when using them to benefit different teams.

Lucia is oriented towards supporting Rupture characters; Astra is generally flexible with her buffs being fairly universal, so she works well in many different teams. Nicole works best with Ether DPS characters such as Zhu Yuan and Yixuan, but her defense debuff and ability to work with different builds are valuable for other characters too, so she's still fairly strong as a F2P / budget option.

D for Doggo.

Dialyn is letting people get great scores with agents like Corin and Nekomata. She gets 4 stuns against WH straight through phys resist (granted, with sig). I'd pull her if you are even remotely tempted in her. She's crazy. She's Yuzuha for anyone who wants a stunner.

That being said, if you do pull her, I'd be prepared to skip either Sanby or YSG as a Sanby rerun in 2.5 is not unlikely (just based on timing, we unfortunately won't know for sure until after Dialyn's banner ends) and your odds of getting both Sanby/YSG with zero pulls to start are not amazing. In that position it's hard to say, YSG will probably be stronger but Sanby will probably not get a second rerun for much longer than YSG's first. YMMV.

That would be pretty tough to find, since it's more of a mood than a genre. It's pretty jazzy, so city jazz or maybe melodic funk might be genres to explore?

FWIW, here's the Spotify link for that track:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2SkaRqbFC2Awm7Ft42aKP1?si=2ef36be2bc264d2a

Here's the whole OST. You can find the other 60% ... tracks here as well:

https://open.spotify.com/album/74Y0dW8JxYd5lvohIVLv8x?si=Pp76ApVxSLmRcnFnokDQFw

And here's a translation, since all the track names are in CN:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZZZ_Official/comments/1hnnb01/hyper_commission_ost_unofficial_track_list/

It doesn't really matter because these are all craftable and trivial to get, but you are most likely to use the fossilized core or puzzle sphere.

14+ days.

https://zenless-zone-zero.fandom.com/wiki/Back_in_Business

neither really make sense to me as being variants. Li Sushang moveset was farmed out to Yanqing in HSR while the actual variant has basically none of it, so I would not consider that a defining characteristic of her variants and she doesn't have Sushang extreme low level of book smarts which is what unifies the two versions in my mind. I would just think of the moveset as being more general Wuxia martial artist inspired then belonging to any specific character.

Acheron is also pretty questionable as one thing they generally like in variants is having similar personality traits and here there is very little overlap between Shunguang and the general Mei personality, Shunguang is way too happy go lucky to fit with Mei's fairly serious personality. Fu Hua is also another example of them liking to do white red for powered up states so I don't see it as something identifies a variant.

I don't think it is crazy to see some narrative parallels between Acheron and Shunguang but that doesn't make characters variants.

I seeing parallels that aren't really there?

This. They repeat themes and color schemes but when they do an expy it's pretty clearly and deliberately an expy. Mei, Raiden Mei, and Acheron; Yae Sakura and Yae Miko; Kiana and the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles; Bronya, Bronya, Silver Wolf; Seelie and Seelie; etc. I can see arguments for things like Kevin and Phainon but I tend to be in the "not an expy" camp on those and for ZZZ in particular the team seems to want to separate the lore from the rest of the sea of quanta/imaginary tree lore they have everywhere else so I do not expect expys here.

You can buy one copy in the Signal Shop with the Immediate Invitation Gift.

They usually run A-ranks alongside S-ranks that would work well with them, which means for Manato I'd expect whenever a stunner or Lucia or something is rerunning. But they could just do it whenever if they feel he hasn't been in rotation long enough.

We will know if he is uprate on one of the next two banners after the livestream, he is not uprate on the current banner or the Banyue banner outside of that he should be in the general pool.

If you're playing her as sub DPS you are not going to be able to maintain fusion compiler uptime, so that should make Weeping the best (but it and Lip Gloss should be pretty close and might even depend on your support Wengine).

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. It's a legit question.

I can't answer the mobile question since I play on PS5 and PC. But I'll give the rest a shot.

At the time it was released, it was one of very few urban scifi/cyberpunk genre gachas, so the setting and character designs were a nice change from the more typical magical fantasy or space fantasy genres. Since then, Neverness to Everness went into beta and Ananta showed gameplay, so it's no longer rare in that genre. Still, you can actually play it and it has a year and a half of content to explore and enjoy, so that's something.

It's a Hoyo gacha, so the gambling isn't great but isn't terrible either. Pretty mid in terms of exploitative elements. I've played worse drop rates and pity systems. However, even compared to other Hoyo gachas, it's above average for f2p players. Powercreep is happening, but it's happening slower than most other gachas, and people are still clearing the hardest content with starter characters. That probably won't last forever and it's a much bigger struggle now than a year ago, but the fact that it is even possible, even with A-ranks (4-stars), is remarkable and pretty unusual.

Finally, combat is still top tier. That was a stand-out feature when it was first released and is still very strong. You'll see some debate (read, keyboard warrior brawling) about whether WUWAs combat is better/worse than ZZZ. I don't play WUWA so I don't have an opinion, but anyone who says ZZZ combat is trash or for babies doesn't know what they are talking about. Don't take my word for it, you can see plenty of gameplay clips on YouTube and decide for yourself.

waiting until a new player event

Both "New Player" and "Returner" events we had so far in ZZZ only really provided notable net-positive reward compared to usual stuff to those who sent a referral codes, and even for those it was not a lot of premium currency (if my memory serves it was less than a pull per redeemed code).

waiting until a new player event

Will be waiting a long time. I can't recall a new player event in any Hoyo game outside HI3 and that was semi-permanent (got updated once in the 3 years I was playing).

If he wants Banyue, forget about waiting. Banyue has a shortened banner. Besides, what your friend would earn from dailies and weeklies alone by starting early would likely far exceed anything a new player event would give.

It's not just you. The new areas are laggy, but they used to be a whole lot worse. Aerospace City was literally unplayable (crashes, lock-ups, stutter so severe it looked like a slide show), but over the course of several patches it improved. So now it's playable but laggy in certain areas.

Above all else, pull the characters you would enjoy. Everything that follows is based on meta value, not who you like/dislike.

If you only consider the current banner, which is Dialyn and Hugo, it would be Dialyn the stunner.

However, you need main dps type agents more than a stunner, so it might make sense to wait a few days and get Banyue in the next banner. You could also or alternatively get Ellen, but I don't generally recommend pulling reruns over new characters, unless the rerun is specifically Miyabi, Yixuan, or a limited Support.

More importantly, a new Void Hunter is coming in the next patch, so make sure that whatever you do in this patch, you are going to have at least 20k polychromes (125 pulls) saved towards pulling Ye Shunguang.

With all that considered, the overall priority ought to be: Ye Shunguang > Dialyn > Banyue > (any rerun, unless it's one of the special ones I mentioned above.)

For your existing roster, first pick a main dps you want to play. That could be Billy, Corin, or Anton. Build them first -- unless you pull Banyue, in which case build him instead. Then build Nicole. Then build Anby (unless you pull Dialyn).

Testing shows a small improvement, in the 3%-5% range, for most Attack agents. So don't expect miracles. You also have to make sure your Dialyn rotation is optimal so that you get max Ult duplication in stun windows.

Evelyn, one Ult is stronger than two chains.

I think the lockout was like an hour or two if I recall correctly, as someone who was similarly annoyed at the time.

The one with 80/128 Crits. I'm curious how you were able to convert 633 ATK points into so much more Crits and AP? What exactly did you change in the build? Is this with or without Miyabi's sig?

Not to my knowledge. I do disc rolling by collecting a bunch (2-4 weeks) then filtering down to one set and the thee substats I want (usually atk% and the two crit) and roll every disc with all 3 to +9 and to +15 if it rolls well, then bump the filter down to 2 required subs and roll those. Then I drop down to one and filter to disc 4/5/6 with the main stats I care about and roll those. I then go in to the reclaim screen, filter to the working disc set, and recycle all S-rank which clears everything that isn't leveled. It's quite a few steps but it's generally only a few minutes and much faster than going through every disc.

You got mono ice or Yuzu ice? It's very good on that boss.

According to this page, the totals are:

DA = 720 every 2 weeks

SD = 1060 every 2 weeks

NH = 540 every 1 weeks

So approximating for 30 days = (2.14 x 720) + (2.14 x 1060) + (4.29 x 540) = 1540 + 2268 + 2316 = 6124 ... let's say 6000 give or take, since you can't really earn IMs in single units, only by groups of 10.

Shop reset all items (except unlimited dennies) total = 7405

So no, that's not enough to clear the entire store (unlimited dennies notwithstanding).

But why would you want to clear the entire store anyway? I only buy the Tuning Calibrator (2000), the Boopons (2000), and the discounted dennies (600), so I have extra IMs left over every cycle, which carryover. So when I occasionally want to buy a Hamster Cage or Hi-Fi Masters, I can do so.

If you want to try for 9 star I would try ZY/Dialyn/Nicole vs thrall, Yx/Panda/Trigger vs Hunter, Miyabi/Yanagi/Astra vs bringer. If you just want to try for 6 stars, put Yx/Dialyn/Panda vs either Thrall or Hunter and Miyabi/Yanagi/Astra vs Bringer.

and my teams from when I last played in 2.0 were struggling to get more than 4-5 stars

That's not necessarily a comp issue though. Even if you play someone's meta team it will still underperform if their substats aren't great, their engines aren't leveled up (yes, including the stunners and supports), or you don't play them right.

I know farming disks is a pain, but you're expected to have good substats if you want S-rank on Shiyu and DA.

As for comps for this DA:

• Bringer: Miyabi - Yanagi - Rina

• Wandering Hunter: Yixuan - Panda - Astra/Pulchra

• Thrall: Attack DPS - Dialyn/Trigger - Astra/Nicole

As for which Attack agent, I've seen people get S-rank on Thrall with Harumasa, but it's hard since the fight is bugged for him. Shots passing through the boss without actually hitting, Quivers disappearing or going flying off-screen instead of at the boss, so on.

So, someone other than him. Try Nekomata or ZY.

At a high level, Miyabi on Bringer and Dialyn on Thrall, since the buffs and bosses are biased that way. Hunter you'll have to cobble together whoever is left.

So maybe something like:

Bringer: Miyabi/Yanagi/(Rina, Soukaku, or Nicole) -- you need a Disorder team that doesn't use Physical for Bringer (no Piper, Jane, or Alice).

Thrall: Yixuan/Pan/Dialyn

Hunter: Zhu Yuan/Trigger/Astra

This is not a good cycle for Haru or electric teams, though I did 3-star Hunter with my 6-cost Trigger/S0/Orphie team. ;D

Upgrade how? All the agents worth upgrading are already level 60. Did you mean with mindscapes maybe? Or maybe refining equipment (grinding disc drives)?

You don't have to upgrade Rina if you don't have a team to put her on. I don't see an obvious team for her, unless you run Grace on the regular.

This feels doable. Can you try again after switching Pan to 4pc Astral. Moonlight Lullaby is doing nothing for Pan because of the "When the equipper is a Support character" part of the effect. And Astral is pretty easy to stack with Lighter on the team with his built in QA (if you were running Astral you would already have 2-3 stacks for most of the stuns in the video just by playing normally)

You probably already know this, but you always want to double chain, I assume it was a misclick on your 3rd stun. Also try to use your 3rd ult in stun (can be either 3rd stun or 4th stun, preferably 3rd in case you don't have time in the 4th stun but you would need to parry to Manato to get a bit more decibels), not only for the stun mult but also for Yunkui 4pc, ulting in stun will do much more damage.

Also try to parry into Manato more, he does a lot of damage on his follow ups. And try your best to not parry into Pan, it kinda does nothing, you did like 2 daze for Pan parry and follow up combined which is comically low. You are basically losing time everytime you parry to him.

Swap Lighter out. Without his additional ability Lighter only has the resistance shred and stun extension which isn't a lot. Blazing Laurel doesn't help much, your Manato already has plenty of Crit Damage.

You have Dialyn, use her instead. If she's busy on another team, you can try running double support with Lucia (worked for me), or swapping Panda for Lucy or Orphie (if you have her) to turn on Lighter's additional ability (can't comment on how well it performs though)

As for playing Manato, the main issue is just that he's not M6. Without M6 he's prone to running out of bar at the worst times, forcing you to stop just to recharge it.

The best you can do to avoid that is maximizing his use of defensive assist. When he parries with it he automatically recharges some bar. (Note: defensive assist, not the assist follow-up. That one is just damage) He'll still likely run out of bar here and there but as long as it doesn't happen during the stun window you're gucci.

Besides that:

• When the boss turns on miasma shield and you have to choose the right Lucia, swap to someone else so you can parry Hunter with Manato.

• Never use his special to recharge unless the bar gets low, you're just shooting your damage output in the foot by doing that, especially during the stun window. Basically, you don't want to stop unless you absolutely have to.

If you're doing it just to avoid his last basic attack, don't do that, you can just swap-cancel to Panda during the animation and quick-assist back to Manato. Same with his EX.

As for builds, Manato and Lighter are fine, but Panda's is terrible. Get Moonlight Lullaby out, he's not a Support agent, the 4pc effect literally does nothing for him. Run 4pc Astral Voice (yes, even without full buff) or Proto-Punk (since you will do a lot of defensive assists)

And max out his core passive, as it is he's only giving 495 Sheer Force instead of the full 540.

Well, Lighter needs an Attack agent or an SoC faction on the team to get his max buffs, but even without, you still get the benefit of his daze and stun window timer extension. You can try swapping Lucy in for Pan, but I doubt the loss of Pan's Sheer DMG buff and healing is worth it.

Your Manato is only M2, so this is probably as good as you are going to get. He really needs to be M6 for Deadly Assault.

I will say, you did an excellent job of taking max 5 stacks of Hunter's debuff into every stun window. You get a stack for every perfect parry and dodge counter and each stack increases Sheer DMG by 7% for a max 35% buff. The stack has a timer and only stays up for 15 seconds, so it's easy to drop at the worst time, like right before an Ultimate. Make sure you don't delay Manato's Ult too late into the stun window or you may drop the debuff stacks. There's an icon under Hunter's health bar that counts up to 5 and shows the time remaining.

They only save past 6mo, if Hoyo doesn't know then the sites won't either.

It's way worse at the start, after the first commission it's fine. Maybe like 1/10th of the stuff is unvoiced at that point, but it's a bit jarring because it's random.

(And then there are the usual unvoiced sections that have been in every patch)

Sort of. Attribute matching is one thing to consider, but it's not the only thing and rarely is the most important thing.

Here are several things to consider. They are not in rank order, because each item interacts with every other item when making trade-off decisions:

• Combat situational factors: Like which boss it is, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what the seasonal or floor buffs are, etc.

• Your available roster: Which characters you have available to use in teams against that combat situation. If the floor buff helps stunners and you don't have any stunners in your roster, you can't utilize that buff.

• Individual character kits. For example, Character A may need another Ice or Faction agent in the team to enable their Additional Ability. But the value of that AA has to be weighed against other factors.

• The teams you can make that would benefit the most from the situation, balanced against other boss fights in the same mode that might make demands on your roster. For example, if you put your best Ice main dps on Boss #1, that main won't be available for Boss #2, which may also be weak to Ice.

• The rotation for each team. Some rotations are a better match for a particular boss fight than others.

Attribute matching is driven by combat situational factors (Boss #1 is weak to Ice and resistant to Fire), available roster, character kits and team comps. It might make sense to set up an all Ice team against Boss #1, unless that takes a stunner away from Boss #2 that would be more beneficial. Getting the stunner bonus from Boss #2 is worth more than the Ice weakness or the Additional Ability that might be lost, so moving your Ice stunner from Boss #1 to Boss #2 may make sense, overriding Attribute matching.

I think the other subthread is overthinking it, Miyabi's damage is charged attack >>> ult / ex / anomaly >>> nothing else matters. You should only be basic attacking on her (without M2) if you need to build anomaly or energy, basically just to waste time when nothing else is going on. You can cancel it or not cancel it or swap out or whatever, it doesn't matter.

You can but she's invincible during it anyway, you definitely shouldn't do it if you have M2.

i did:

miyabi team on bringer, Yixuan team on thrall, Sol11 on hunter. you can change sol11 for ellen (and her respective team)

i barely just passed 20k on thrall and hunter.

Manato/Ju Fufu/Pan into Wandering Hunter, Yixuan/Dialyn/Nicole into Thrall. Assuming everyone is built this should clear both.

Manual combos do more damage because they're faster, because they get an additional finisher, and because they get an additional fire damage bonus.

Were getting them in 2.5

There are two kinds of characters:

• Standard banner characters (the ones you get with master tapes). You will get these as a side effect of looking for limited characters, don't worry too much about them. These are all A ranks as well as Lycaon, Koleda, Rina, Soldier 11, Nekomata, and Grace.
• Limited characters, of which typically two are running at any given time: a new release and a rerun. Currently Dialyn and Hugo. There will be A-ranks attached to this banner who you'll get along the way, and when you "win" an S-rank it's 50/50 between the one you wanted and one of the standard ones above. If you lose the 50/50, the next one is guaranteed.
• It can take up to 6 months for a character to rerun.

Vivian's skin is currently a spending event where you need to spend 180 pulls before it ends. You'll easily get enough to do this, but whether or not you actually want to spend them all on this patch is up to you. Otherwise it'll move into the shop in a month or two.

That being said, Vivian herself likely won't rerun for a number of months, as she just reran a month ago.