With HoYoVerse releasing weapon information into the wild for Genshin Impact – the community reacting in the most brainless manner over their stats, usages, and pull-worthiness – an official Genshin Impact tweet showcased the brand-new weapons, while Paimon spent a good few minutes hyping her heart out alongside the drama unfolding in the comments as the community researchfull – theorycrafted a lot, with passionate disagreements punctuating the discussion.

Initial impressions of the weapons themselves. Full stats are linked officially, but the community taken in by and starring two of them immediately: the Fractured Halo polearm and the Flame-forged Insight claymore. Player Yurika_Hanagawa thinks that the polearm fits Nod-krai teams perfectly, or whatever that is – a new meta! The claymore could be outright disruptive, they say, for Electo-charged and Bloom comps. Anybody? Or are there simply no good claymore users to use the valid new weapon effects, according to GyuShinoo? There began a flurry of counterarguments about how Kaveh mains are finally getting some shine, how it is some future-proofing for a character that is set to be released, and so forth.

Things got spicy – heavy on the toxic side, absolutely spicy – twice! – when Kryozlol, perhaps in a fit of rage and an almost total inability to take in any other point of view, damns the weapons because they supposedly don’t buff older reactions enough. Then it completely devolved into keyboard-warfare land, with Fdruid commenting “make your own damn game” and others chasing with fairly reasonable arguments about players wanting new mechanics, not the old recycled ones. Ah! Classic Genshin-type conversations where a single opinion spawns fifty separate reply chains, each escalating in drama. Somewhere in the middle, Nero60402746 said, quite elegantly, “Then piss off,” a line that proves Twitter debates haven’t really evolved since 2010.

And the free-to-play corner began drooling over those new 4-star weapons said by a few to become absolute game-changers for Kaveh builds. Mokyodai clearly stated, “so good for Kaveh,” while others argued whether it could suit Thoma or even a “thundering furry Razor” build (yes, that’s apparently a thing). The viability of the weapon set off many discussions on current meta teams versus what could be in the interest of the future, with Lunamoo71330902 pointing out that hoyo would typically muse weapons that would only become relevant a few months later when new characters drop.

Not everything was mellow, though; Detoge lamented motion sickness from farming materials in the new underwater area. ShadowFates kept it gritty with, “I ain’t getting that, because I am poor,” a sentiment recognized by any gacha player. Escalations appeared from ast3rrr_ threatening to self-harm if Escoffier doesn’t get a rerun soon. Dramatic? Absolutely. Very much Genshin Twitter.

It is evident from this that Version 5.8 weapons are stirring the pot well before landing on live servers. Between the meta implications, the usual Twitter schism, and players theorycrafting new team comps, this update might actually end up being a fair bit meta-changing than initially expected. Is it worth pulling for these weapons or are they just benchwarmers? That shall sooner or later be one place where we’ll even argue about Genshin’s community in the next batch.