Looking back from 2026, I can still feel the electric jolt of anticipation that surged through me on the night of September 1, 2021. Genshin Impact Version 2.1 had arrived, and with it, two brand‑new Electro characters—the Raiden Shogun and Kujou Sara. I remember sitting in my dimly lit room, phone clutched tight, Primogems stashed for months like a dragon hoarding treasure. The moment I pulled Baal, her shimmering silhouette descending from the wish animation, I honestly screamed. My heart raced as I immediately jumped into the game, eager to unleash the Almighty Narukami Ogosho’s power.

The first few hours were pure bliss. I ran through Inazuma’s stormy landscapes, her normal attacks tearing through Hilichurls with a gratifying woosh. Kujou Sara’s tengu wings added a flourish of style to my party. But then reality struck—hard and unrelenting—like a Thunder Manifestation’s homing missile. I had crafted a master plan. You see, I’m a free‑to‑play (f2p) player. My account lived and breathed on careful resource management and clever team synergy. When MiHoYo handed out Beidou for free in the 2.0 event, everything clicked. Electro Resonance would boost my energy recharge, Beidou’s Stormbreaker would chain lightning while Raiden’s Secret Art: Musou Shinsetsu activated, and my enemies would vanish in a spectacular light show. It was perfect. Except it didn’t work.

I recall that first Abyss run with both of them in the party like it was yesterday—even now, five years later, the frustration feels fresh. I popped Raiden’s Elemental Burst, her sword crackling with the promised divine punishment, and… nothing. Beidou’s lightning discharges, the very heart of her Burst, refused to trigger on Raiden’s Musou Isshin strikes. I stood there in the middle of Spiral Abyss Floor 12, mouth agape, while a Ruin Guard casually stomped my characters into the dirt. The dream team comp did not exist.

What went wrong? The community soon deciphered the cruel mechanical twist. During Raiden’s Burst, her attacks are treated as Normal Attack movements, yet the damage they deal is classified as Elemental Burst DMG. This means effects that explicitly trigger on “Normal Attack hits” should work—Xingqiu’s Rain Swords dance perfectly with her, as do many other off‑field supports. So why did Beidou’s Stormbreaker, with the very same description, get left behind? MiHoYo’s silence on the matter only poured salt in the wound. To this day, many of us still don’t know if it was an intentional design choice or a bug that simply never got fixed.

And that wasn’t even the full storm. The Electro element itself felt like a forgotten child in Teyvat’s family of elements. I had invested heart and soul into Keqing earlier that year. With painstakingly farmed Artifacts bearing crit rate and crit DMG substats she should have soared. Instead, she consistently lagged behind my Diluc and even my Razor. The core issue? Electro’s elemental reactions—Overloaded, Electro‑Charged, Superconduct—simply could not compete with the multiplicative glory of Melt and Vaporize. In 2021, you’d see a Hu Tao vaporizing for six‑digit numbers, while my Keqing’s Electro‑Charged ticks hovered in the low thousands.

MiHoYo had acknowledged this. Back in April 2021 they teased a buff to Electro reactions, which materialized in Version 1.6. The update increased the base damage of transformative reactions for characters above Level 60 and boosted the entire Elemental Mastery curve. I logged in full of hope that day too. The numbers went up, yes, but it felt like placing a Band‑Aid on a deep wound. The fundamental weakness remained—and for the Raiden Shogun, these reaction buffs meant almost nothing. She wasn’t designed to be a reaction trigger. Her kit revolved around pure Burst damage and recharging the team. What she needed was a buff to Electro itself, perhaps a reworked Electro Resonance that provided actual combat utility instead of a laughable single particle every five seconds.

🌩️ How the community reacted

• Twitter hashtags #FixBaal and #BuffElectro started trending, though not without confusion—Mortal Kombat fans were baffled by the sudden Raiden chatter.

• Reddit threads exploded with damage calculation sheets proving, irrefutably, how C0 Raiden without her signature weapon fell behind other limited 5‑stars.

• Videos comparing C0 Raiden to the monstrous C3 or C6 versions went viral, painting a stark “whale vs. f2p” divide.

Some players likened the situation to the infamous Zhongli release drama from 1.1. Back then, the Geo Archon was so undertuned that Chinese players staged a massive outcry, eventually forcing MiHoYo to buff Geo as an entire element and redesign Zhongli’s kit. We held onto that precedent like a lifeline. If enough voices—especially from the massive CN community—raised a storm, the Raiden Shogun would receive the same treatment. As each day passed in late 2021, we monitored official channels for any hint, any teaser of a private beta test for Electro adjustments. We even joked that MiHoYo might “pull a Zhongli” and turn Raiden into a must‑pull powerhouse several patches later.

From the vantage point of 2026, I can say that some things have changed and some have not. Raiden did receive indirect buffs through new artifact sets and team compositions like the emblem‑powered Hypercarry teams. The release of Dendro in 3.0 finally gave Electro a transformative reaction—Quicken/Aggravate—that leveraged high damage per hit instead of scaling purely off Elemental Mastery. That change single‑handedly resurrected Keqing and made Electro characters competitive again. But that core incompatibility with Beidou? It was never “fixed,” and to this day, new players stumble into the same trap I did. It stands as a permanent lesson in Genshin Impact: never assume synergy based on text alone.

Still, I don’t look back on my early Raiden story with just bitterness. It taught me to manage expectations in gacha games. An archon’s lore strength rarely translates 1:1 into gameplay. And if you’re playing for free, C0 performance is your reality—no amount of copium will turn it into a C3 showcase. In the end, I kept using Raiden, because she was fun, and because I loved her character. But I’ll never forget that September day when my carefully planned team collapsed, and the Electro thunder rang hollow.