Genshin Impact players want Dehya “fixed”
Making the hashtags #BuffDehya and #FixDehya trend on Twitter, the community of Genshin Impact is trying to pressure developer MiHoYo into buffing the game’s newest character. This public campaign on social media comes after Dehya was released without any considerable changes compared to her beta version, which was already perceived as being too weak by players.
Leaked information as well as some unfortunate scenes in Dehya’s character demo video had convinced a loud subset of players that the Eremite mercenary would be nearly useless in the game’s combat challenges. Her Normal Attack combos as well as her Elemental Skill were the focus of this criticism, which already began well before her release.
Since players like Dehya as a character, many say that she doesn’t deserve being treated to such a terrible kit of abilities, especially as a 5-star character – the premium tier of Genshin Impact characters.
Historically speaking, though, this protest campaign does not have great odds of success. While MiHoYo has once in a while caved to public pressure when it comes to certain things – the huge row around what the community perceived as meager anniversary rewards comes to mind – and made changes accordingly, this has never been true for game balance with one singular exception (Zhongli).
There are several characters in the game that are nearly irrelevant when it comes to clearing the late-game combat challenges, but never has MiHoYo done anything to buff them. The release of update 3.0 with the Dendro element did bring back a few characters from oblivion thanks to the new options this huge gameplay mechanic opened, but these were not targeted buffs. There are also instances where bug fixes or wider mechanical changes benefited certain figures, but again these were not buffs intended to boost certain characters.
We can’t really speculate why MiHoYo is doing things as it's doing them, but seeing how it’s a consistent policy overall there must be a reason for it that holds up to internal debate. We also don’t have any insight into what MiHoYo’s designers are planning further down the line – it’s possible that additional artifacts, characters, or mechanical changes may give Dehya a bit of a boost at some point.
It’ll be interesting to see if MiHoYo sticks to its established policy or will deliver a bit of a buff to Dehya in the 3.6 update – looking at it now, though, that seems unlikely.
