Is Pulling on the Standard Banner in Genshin Impact Worth It?

The standard banner of Genshin Impact is exactly as it sounds. It is the normal banner that doesn’t have any rate-ups or feature any specific character. All the 5-star characters on it are all ones players could gain from an event banner if they didn’t pull the event character. Most of the time, I hear a lot of community members telling new players to not pull on this banner at all, but I have a much different opinion.

First, let’s establish how the gacha system in Genshin Impact works. Players are always viable in getting a 5-star character in every pull, though it’s only guaranteed after 80 pulls. Players thus have to “build pity” in order to get that guaranteed 5-star. Even then, there’s a 50/50 chance of pulling that event character and losing it to a standard 5-star character. After losing a 50/50, it’s guaranteed to get an event 5-star character while winning the 50/50 means having to facing another 50/50 on the next event 5-star. Every ten pulls guarantees at least one 4-star character or weapon.

There are always three kinds of banners: the event banner, the weapon banner, and the standard banner. Each of these have their own separate pity numbers, so they don’t all allow players to build up pity for a certain 5-star. The weapon banner is a thing all in and of itself with its own unique features that I won’t get into.

The event banner rates up the possibility of getting certain characters. The upcoming banner includes the 5-stars Raiden Shogun and Kamisato Ayato while also rating up the chances of getting 4-stars Sayu, Kujou Sara, and Rosaria. Any player pulling on this banner is pretty much guaranteed to pull one of these 4-stars and possibly the event 5-star.

The standard banner includes all 4-star characters as well as many 4-star weapons. The catch with this is that the 5-star a player pulls can be either a weapon or a character. Those include Mona, Qiqi, Diluc, Tighnari, Jean, and Keqing. In these cases, it’s never guaranteed to get a certain character or instead pulling a 5-star weapon, which is what leads many players recommend to never pull on this banner.

But, I think there’s a catch that needs to be added to this tip. I completely agree that as a high-leveled player, this banner becomes unnecessary, especially as a long-term player who has gone through many event banners with different 4-stars. However, as a new player, I feel that the standard banner is pretty useful. It’s difficult to actually obtain enough primogems (in-game currency) to reach a high enough pity to get a guaranteed 5-star. The chances of getting a 5-star without a high pity that being quite low. Many new players, instead, build up 4-star characters to create their teams.

The standard banner would allow new players to reach a bigger pool of 4-star characters. Recent 4-star characters on event banners have largely been region-locked. This means players won’t power up these characters unless they’ve reached that character’s region in the story quest, and it takes hours of playing to do that. The standard banner has a higher chance of giving a player a 4-star they can actually use and power up compared to the event banner with its limited 4-star rate-ups.

As a higher-leveled player though, the standard banner isn’t worth it. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below or at our Boss Rush Discord!

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