After four+ years, I finally built Xingqiu and Bennett.

For reference, these were my 39th and 40th characters to level 80. Both have been in the “leveled to 20 for the free fate” status since I pulled them, until the last couple of weeks when I decided to grind them up because what else am I supposed to do until the next content drop. I’ve been putting building Bennett off because so much about the character just gets on my nerves. I’m not sure why I put off Xingqiu, but apparently he got lumped into being Bennett-adjacent.

Anyway, from the perspective of someone who has built a ton of teams without using either and is starting to play around with both of them, it is nuts how much more useful they are than a ton of the five star characters I’ve picked up over the years.

Like, Xingqiu. Seems to enable hydro reactions better than anyone else I have except maybe Yelan. INCREDIBLY easy to build since he just takes Emblem castoffs and I had tons of those lying around, and his only weakness is a long skill cooldown but that’s negated with an r5 sacrificial sword. Maybe doesn’t do a ton of personal damage but all those blue 5k hits probably add up pretty fast.

Bennett. Heals. Applies pyro. Crazy attack buff. As someone who largely played defense or HP-scaling characters until quite recently, I really didn’t pay much attention to what an attack buff would do for damage, but the only character I’ve really tested with has been Yanfei and it turns her from a character that is kind of tickling enemies to death into one that drops orbital ordinance on anything unlucky enough to be nearby.

And, he’s even cheaper and easier to build than Xingqiu. I dropped about 400 resin in the Noblesse domain - since I’d never bothered to go in there before - and got a set of HP and ER-heavy artifacts. Then I stuck a 5-star sword that had spooked me on the standard banner on him and, well, he’s done. I don’t need to go back to him except to finish leveling his artifacts.

And, as a bonus, both of them are pretty brain dead to use. I just swap to them, push their skill and burst buttons, then swap away. There’s nothing really complicated to keep track of.

Granted, starting with both at c6 is probably coloring my perceptions, but how did these characters ever get made and how did they not get nerfed into oblivion at some point? DID they get nerfed at any point?