From what I’ve seen, a lot of people don’t seem to enjoy Zani’s gameplay, describing it as “heavy” and slow.
I’ll only be talking about her gameplay here, not the entire Spectro Frazzle mechanic.
One of the reasons I love Wuthering Waves is how fluid its combat feels. Boss fights almost feel like a piece of music. Learning an enemy’s attack patterns is, in a way, learning that melody. The perfect dodge system makes it feel like you’re keeping the same rhythm as your opponent.
You break the fight down note by note, then adapt to it and move in sync with it.
But with Zani, I don’t get that same feeling, and I think it’s because of her Resonance Skill, which is…
A counter.
At first glance, it seems pretty simple, but here’s how I see it.
A counter gives us another option besides constantly dodging. Instead of only adapting, we also get to punish.
A perfect dodge proves that you understand the melody. A counter proves that you know the melody so well that you find it predictable enough to punish.
I’d even go further and say that Zani’s counter lets us impose our own rhythm on the opponent. Not only can she chain up to three counters with almost no interruption (Skill → Enhanced Skill → Ultimate → Skill again), but those counters are also excellent at reducing the enemy’s Vibration Strength (or whatever the gauge is actually called).
That makes it feel like you’re genuinely punishing your opponent for being too predictable.
Moreover, that heavy, slow feeling people criticize is actually what makes her gameplay work for me.
It’s as if the enemy’s attack pattern were a series of gears turning together. Zani’s counter acts like a wrench thrown into the mechanism, jamming everything for a brief moment before the machine starts moving again.
The weight behind her animations makes it feel like you’re interrupting the flow of the fight rather than simply following it.
The other counters in the game (from what I remember) don’t really give me that feeling.
* mornye: Meh. Mostly just flashy effects.
* Jianxin: Much better. The sound design and the brief pause before the counter lands really sell the impact.
* Taoqi: I started playing her hoping her counter would feel like Beidou’s from Genshin Impact, but… not really. Something about it just feels off.
The only issue I have with Zani’s counter is that she doesn’t seem to use the momentum of the attack she’s blocks.
Imagine if she absorbed the incoming force, spun with it, then slammed the enemy using the combined weight of her sword and shield. It would make the counter feel even more powerful and satisfying.
That would be perfect.
