Notes on the Spiral Abyss, mostly Floor 12
Floor 11 is anemo impact.
Floor 12 second half with bosses: hyperbloom, bow dps like Lyney can work. Bringing a bow user like Yelan or Lyney for the drake in chamber 3 can help disable it.
The wenut boss is an example where quickswap units can be flexible given the wenut has short periods where you can attack it. For example, Nahida can always apply dendro with her NA or E. In general, bows and catalysts can get easy access to elemental damage. Even Alhaitham, who is sometimes more locked-in on-field than Nahida, has different ways of gaining infusion (via NA, E, Q). So characters that can frontload damage can work against the wenut.
Eula, Ayaka could also work against the wenut. Ayaka is basically like a bow/catalyst as she always has access to infusion via sprinting. Characters that can keep infusion even after swapping out (Diluc, Noelle) can have flexibility when dealing with the wenut.
The ruin serpent is similar to the wenut boss. Quickswap/frontloading dps can work. It can almost be said that many of the Fontaine units 4.x have been designed to counter bosses like these.
This is one of the easier abyss incarnations.
First half chamber 3 has tulpa, so it's hyperbloom city (Nahida, Alhaitham, etc.). Use geo on first half as second half has geo enemies. In fact any dps can work so long as it is not hydro.
Second half any dps can work as long as it is not electro. Second half chamber 1 has thunderbird, so hyperbloom can work. Second half chamber 2 has geo shields and geovishaps: anemo and dendro dps work here. Eula can also work.
As the lawachurls and tulpa hit hard, bringing a shield or some dmg reduction can help. Or just be good at dodging like Xiao.
The tulpa and thunderbird are elemental beings, meaning that vv shred is less effective. At least floor 12 does not have the soccer balls or enormous dot.
Floor 11 gives 75% geo dmg (whereas 4.2 abyss gave 60% to both hydro dmg/cryo dmg). The floor is anti-hydro as both sides have hydro immune beings. Chamber 1 monolith defense is easier than previous versions. Anemo swirl and cc can also work against the autumn elemental shields.
Arataki team can work better against the thunderbird as its attacks seem to do more poise dmg and interrupt characters' attacks. Noctis team can work better against the perpetual hypostasis boss as its attacks do not seem to interrupt Noctis as much as the thunderbird. Moreover, as the cube has phases of invulnerability (as per the rock-paper-scissors turn-based philosophy), quickswap units that are not locked on-field can be more flexible against it. Also, Noctis can use vv hydro res shred against the cube unlike the thunderbird.
Blessing: after picking up a crystallize shard, the character deals 15% more dmg, stacking up to 3 times. This would be a decent passive to put on a geo unit, allowing them to provide a universal dmg buff. For more on improving geo see the article on geo.
Also has anyone noticed that the thunderbird looks like an electro oceanid?
Due to the pyro shields on the first half, mono hydro can work. For example: Venti-Focalors-Yelan-Barbara. Venti is for cc and vv (btw the cc helps a lot with the 2 pyro lectors in the 3rd chamber). It could help to use Favonius weapons, especially to give Barbara ER so that she can spam her burst heal on cd to maximize Focalors' buff.
From testing, this mono-hydro team can actually outperform a hyperbloom team. Why? Because the pyro shields on the mages and lectors. So mono-hydro is indeed a big winner of Focalors' debut. You can use Charlotte or some other party healer in lieu of Barbara, but we say Barbara to destroy the pyro gauge faster.
Of course, hyperbloom is still king on the second half.
Two hyperbloom teams can clear floor 12. The first chamber is the hardest because of the electro unicorn armor and 3 pyro shields. If having trouble, one can try triple dendro quicken on the electro unicorn. The shield takes 19 gu of dendro/pyro/cryo to break. And it is more efficient to break the shield before the unicorn flies into the air to summon the 3 electro balls. So over-applying dendro can help break it faster (Alhaitham, Nahida, etc.). Mono-pyro teams (like Lyney) can also work.
For 2nd half with the pyro mages, bring a hydro and ideally an aoe dps for the riftwolves. Even a Xiao-Yelan team can work.
Noctis is an example of an efficient character. As he scales with hp and does not need bennett, he is not reliant on Bennett burst or staying in Bennett's circle. Moreover, Noctis' high aoe can hit all enemies. He is also easy to build: even if under level 80, with a 4 star weapon, and not fully leveled talents, he can still clear abyss.
Of course, it could be that the abyss benediction and ley lines benefit Noctis, but the above are general characteristics of hp scaling dps.
Whoever invented hyperbloom deserves the Nobel Prize in game design.
Fontaine is Xiao land. The buffs activate when hp is changed.
Two hyperbloom teams can clear floor 12.
Easier than previous incarnations. Can use two hyperbloom teams to clear floor 12. The first chamber is the hardest of the three. The first half wants hydro for the pyro lector and a healer to combat the rifthounds. A hyperbloom team can work well here, even one with two healers (e.g. Alhaitham/Nahida, Yaoyao, Raiden/Kuki, XQ).
Floor 12 second half has hydro/cryo heralds and the baptist (cryo, hydro, pyro shield). So it would help to bring pyro (for cryo shield), hydro (for pyro shield), and dendro (for hydro shield). Although electro or cryo could also work for hydro shield, dendro is most efficient for the baptist. In other words, the first half encourages people to use burgeon teams. So Yoimiya, Diluc, Dehya, XL can work for pyro. For example, a team like Yoimiya, Nahida, XQ, Thoma has been used to clear the floor. Nahida, XL, Bennett, Yelan/XQ also works.
The second chamber is the easiest of the three.
The third chamber is just a brute force dps check. Hyperbloom or Xiao double geo can work first half. The burgeon type team is almost needed for second half to deal with the baptist shields.
The first chamber first half involves whopperflowers and prisms. This can be speed cleared using hyperbloom teams. It can be cleared faster if one adds Venti as Venti can group and lift both the whopperflowers and prisms. An example team such as Nahida, Raiden, Venti, Yelan (hyperbloom taser/anemo hyperbloom) can speed clear the first half faster than many pure hyperbloom teams.
As for the first chamber second half, burgeon can work for the cryo and hydro shields. One can also bring anemo for swirling and shield shredding. Characters like Xiao, Nahida, Alhaitham, XL, Bennett, Thoma, Yoimiya, Yaoyao, Jean work fine here.
Some 4 star teams that have cleared abyss include: Beidou-Yaoyao-Sucrose-Fischl (quicken taser) first half, Rosaria-XL-Bennett-XQ (cryo national) second half.
In summary first half is more like a dps check. C6 units can clear it without much thinking. The second half is more an elemental gauge check, seeing if you brought the right elements. This kind of abyss really rewards you if you have not just one, but two or more dendro units, like Alhaitham, Nahida, Yaoyao, etc.
If one has enough dps, one can brute force the baptist, even if one does not have all the burgeon elements. The baptist has 1.4M hp, less than the maguu kenki, and no res buffs like the wenut or consecrated beasts. It is really the shields that prolong the fight. But if one has c6 units or a crazy amount of dps, the baptist can be cleared in one of its invulnerable stages. Teams include Xiao-Ayaka nuke, Wanderer C6, Yoimiya-Yelan, Itto C6, Cyno-Nahida-Yelan hyperbloom, Yae-Alhaitham, Raiden national/hypercarry, etc.
Floor chambers 12-2 and 12-3 are quite straight-forward. Nahida Rational first half (deal with the Matrix boss) and Xiao second half can clear it easily (deal with the triple Maguu Kenki). The first chamber 12-1 is probably the hardest of the three as the consecrated beasts are hp sponges with high res and are relentless in their attacks.
As is the case with enemies with high RES (Sumeru is full of them, the drakes, consecrated beasts, etc.) use RES-shred from Faruzan, VV, etc. DEF shred is ok too if you have it.
For 12-1, it is interesting to note that full EM Raiden hyperbloom can outdps standard ATK-sands Raiden build. That is, gear Raiden with Dragon's bane, full EM, 4p gilded to get up to 1k EM. Run Raiden hyperbloom: Raiden-Nahida-Yelan-XQ. The whole point of this team is to spam hyperbloom (which does dendro damage). Nahida can run 4p gilded and full EM so that the Q can give more EM. Yelan or XQ can run deepwood to shred dendro RES on the consecrated beasts. Because dendro RES is shredded, the hyperblooms will do more damage. Raiden's E will be proccing the hyperbloom, and on a full EM build a single hyperbloom can reach 30k+ damage. So when you're spamming 2-4 of these per second, that's a lot of damage.
An advantage of hyperbloom (sprawling shots) is that they will home in on the enemy (like Yoimiya's CA). Moreover they have a pretty large range. So one does not have to worry as much about enemies not being grouped very closely together.
The reason this hyperbloom team can clear 12-1 faster than Rational is because in Rational, one cannot shred electro RES without VV, and in Rational, Raiden's burst contributes a significant portion of dps. So when facing the consecrated beasts who have high RES, there is a drop in Rational's dps as most team members will be facing higher than usual RES.
However, when using hyperbloom Raiden, Raiden's damage is converted into dendro (via hyperbloom). And since Nahida (or other teammates) can shred dendro RES, most of the damage from the team (bloom and hyperbloom) will benefit from the RES shred as it is all dendro damage. And given hyperbloom's naturally high scalings, it can actually defeat enemies quite fast. Recall RES shred gives a multiplier in damage, and this multiplier increases the higher the initial RES of the enemy.
The notable thing about this is that we are starting to see more and more that teams focused on transformative reactions (like hyperbloom) can outdps standard dps teams. That is, full EM builds can outdps standard ATK-CRIT builds. This is one of the blessings given by the introduction of dendro and its reactions.
Another notable thing is that such a hyperbloom team can outdps teams that use Bennett (like Rational). If you replace Yelan or XQ with Bennett, then that does not actually benefit much since Nahida does off-field dendro, Yelan does off-field hydro (and scales with HP), and Raiden's main damage is via hyperbloom, none of which are buffed by Bennett's Q. What's more, Bennett can proc burgeon or steal reactions from Raiden (which can decrease team dps unless Bennett also has an EM build or uses 4p instructor).
Other variations: the team uses double hydro Yelan and XQ so that enemies are perpetually wet to create dendro cores. But one can replace either with Kokomi, who has the advantage that her hydro app is via E (no energy cost). Both Yelan and XQ's hydro app requires energy (even though with double hydro this is mitigated). However, Kokomi's E has 8s downtime (unless using her Q to refresh), so unlike Raiden E or Nahida E, we do not have a hydro unit that can apply hydro on E with 100% uptime without ICD and without energy cost. The game only recently got Dehya (who basically has near 100% uptime on free pyro app via E with C2). But there is currently no hydro Dehya/Nahida/Raiden.
See subdps for more analysis. For the time being, having 100% constant hydro application is expensive and may require double hydro. The double hydro hp buff above only really benefits Yelan. It can make the team tankier by giving them more hp when bloom cores explode.
Another variation is to use double dendro: e.g. Alhaitham-Nahida-Raiden-Yelan/XQ. This can give more EM via dendro resonance. In fact, there may be little difference in using Alhaitham and Nahida for such hyperbloom teams. Both can hit multiple enemies, deal lots of dendro damage, and apply enough dendro to create cores. Even though Alhaitham can do more damage as a dps, the main differences are that Nahida is off-field whereas Alhaitham is on-field, and Nahida can buff the team with her Q by giving EM.
In the above teams, one may have to be careful about healing. Besides replacing Yelan/XQ with Kokomi, one can try replacing Raiden with Kuki or adding Yaoyao to the team. However, Kuki will not have the same range as Raiden's electro application, nor will Kuki have the same uptime (Raiden's E lasts longer than Kuki's E, even at C2). Moreover, Raiden's burst can still be used in full EM mode to drive hyperbloom as well as regenerate energy for the team.
Now the above hyperbloom team is not completely based on transformative reactions. Nahida, Yelan, XQ will all do lots of regular sub-dps damage (want crit), while Raiden is the primary driver of the transformative hyperbloom damage. So the hyperbloom team is a mix of high transformative damage and high regular damage. By one estimate, such a team can achieve ~100k damage per second (each hyperbloom does 30k, there are 2-4 hyperblooms per second, plus Yelan Q doing ~20k per NA, plus XQ's own Q subdps and C2 res shred, plus Nahida's E doing 10-20k per hit).
There is a character that can do both high transformative damage and high regular damage: Cyno. Cyno converts EM into additive damage, q gives 100 EM, he has high scalings on E within Q. Cyno can do it all: he does both high electro and dendro (hyperbloom) damage. Yae can also do this to a lesser extent as she also scales with EM but does not give herself EM like Cyno does.
Hyperbloom essentially turns many electro characters into off-field dendro subdps. Hyperbloom allows electro characters to convert EM into dendro damage. Just stack full EM on Raiden, Yae, Kuki, etc.
Burgeon and hyperbloom have the same scaling with EM. So why not do a similar kind of team based on burgeon? In other words, can we have a 'pyro Raiden' that drives burgeon? Dehya (C2) is the closest thing to a pyro Raiden (besides maybe Thoma or Diluc). But given the different interactions that pyro and electro have with dendro and hydro, there are differences between burgeon and hyperbloom teams.
Both burning and quicken states 'stick' to the enemy and can be destroyed by applying hydro. What is advantage of using pyro over electro? This is a question full EM Dehya can answer.
First the dendro and electro status can coexist in the quicken state. When hydro is applied to the quicken state, it will interact with dendro and create a dendro core. Moreover, hydro and electro can coexist in the electro-charged state. When dendro is applied, it will interact with hydro and also create a dendro core. The fact that dendro, electro, hydro can coexist with each other makes hyperbloom teams quite friendly to build and play.
So what about burgeon? The dendro and pyro status can coexist in the burning state. However, when hydro is applied on a burning enemy, it may not necessarily create a dendro core, but may vaporize the pyro. One would have to apply hydro twice (once to put out the fire) to create a core. Moreover, whereas electro and hydro can coexist in the EC state, pyro and hydro do not really coexist for long when there is a vaporize reaction. They will just disappear. The interactions between pyro, hydro, and dendro make setting up a burgeon team quite different from hyperbloom. It also makes burgeon drivers rarer in the game compared to hyperbloom drivers (which are plentiful).
To have a burgeon driver, they should not apply pyro too much or else the enemy will be burning most of the time. Characters like Xiangling may apply too much pyro on her Q. There needs to be enough time to apply dendro and hydro on the enemy in between pyro, so that burgeon can be used effectively. This is how Dehya and Thoma can be used to drive burgeon (as they give enough time for dendro and hydro to be applied). Dehya's advantage over Thoma is Dehya's E does not have an energy cost.
The advantage that burgeon has over hyperbloom is that burgeon does aoe damage where hyperbloom shots can be more single-target. Moreover, burgeon teams have access to the powerful vaporize reactions.
Besides driving burgeon, Dehya can also be used for burning-melt teams by applying dendro and pyro perpetually to enable melts.
The Setekh Wenut is the most garbage piece of trash boss in the abyss. To defeat it and 9 star floor 12, you are almost forced to use Rational, several 5 star units, or units with constellations. And the units need to be built with good artifacts and stats, as the boss is quite unforgiving otherwise.
In the overworld it has 60% res to anemo and 25% res to everything else. But in the abyss, this is increased to 90% anemo res and 55% res to everything else. Moreover, the Wenut spends most of its time underground (similar to the Ruin Serpent), giving only short time intervals (mostly <10s) where you can attack it. In the abyss, it will fool around underground for around 30-40s.
There is one part where the Wenut will fly into the air and summon wind orbs. Here you need to apply pyro/electro/hydro/cryo to destroy the wind orbs. Once you destroy two orbs the Wenut will fall, become stunned, and have its res to the corresponding element decreased by 45%. It is possible to swirl three elements (e.g. pyro/electro/hydro) on the orbs to shred three elements. This ~20s period is perhaps the most important window to deal lethal damage to the Wenut.
In the total, in the abyss, the time spent underground plus the time it flies up and falls down may take around one minute (one full rotation of the Wenut's moves). To three-star the chamber, you only have three minutes. And the first half may take one minute, giving you only 2 or 3 rotations of the Wenut's moves. In otherwise, you may only get 2 or 3 chances to attack the Wenut in its weakened state (which is pretty much the only time you can deal a lot of damage given its high res the rest of the time).
In the overworld, the Wenut has less hp compared to abyss, and its res is less, so it is very easy to defeat, and you can pretty much use anything you want. But in abyss, that is where shredding the res becomes more important. The Wenut will have millions of hp and super high res most of the time, so even c6 units may not be able to deal a lot of damage during these high-res periods. Your dps is almost constrained to the short window where the Wenut is weakened, and you almost need to shred res here to do damage (e.g. VV/geo res/destroying the wind orbs).
If you have c6 units, you can go ham and use whatever you want: e.g. a c6 Itto geo team with Yae can kill the Wenut quite easily. Eula can also nuke the Wenut to oblivion and is actually a good choice given she can readily deal physical NA dps whenever the Wenut pops up without much setup. But if you don't have c6 units, you can still kill the Wenut, but you may want to strategize a bit more.
Because destroying the wind orbs shreds 45% res, you probably want to bring an electro/pyro/hydro/cryo dps to kill the Wenut. If you want you can bring additional sources of res shred such as VV, but that is not necessary for some teams (such as Rational).
To destroy the wind orbs, you will need characters that can hit things in the air. You can use bows, but there are many other characters that can do the job. For example, Raiden E, Yae, Nahida, and other characters that can jump into the air to hit things or that have large vertical aoe (such as Cyno, Itto, Alhaitham, etc).
So how does Rational work against Wenut? First we refer to the version of Rational with Raiden-Xiangling-XQ/Yelan-Bennett. Some versions have Bennett run 4p instructor (for +120em party buff). Here Raiden needs to be built well with 4p Emblem and catch or 5 star weapon. Unless you have C2 Raiden, you probably need to build the other characters too. Xiangling needs to be built well too with 4p Emblem and catch or 5 star weapon. If Xiangling is not built well, she will not do damage, and the Wenut will become harder to kill in time. XQ/Yelan also need to be built well to do damage (4p Emblem, ER weapon). Most importantly, all the characters should have high ER (more than 150% ER each at least) do make the clear comfortable.
Ideally, start the chamber with everybody's burst up. Use XQ/Yelan's burst, Bennett's burst, XL's burst to start and deal damage intermittently while the Wenut goes in and out underground. Spend this time recharging the three characters' burst too. If Raiden has a surplus of ER (like 300%) you can use her burst too and try to recharge it. But by the time the Wenut first flies up with the wind orbs, everybody's burst needs to be back up.
Once the Wenut flies up with the wind orbs, use XQ/Yelan's burst and use Raiden's E. When the Wenut flies close to the ground, do one NA with Bennett and use Bennett's Q. This will destroy the lowest wind orbs (and should shred both pyro/hydro res). Bennett's Q will proc 4p noblesse (or instructor). Raiden's E will proc and then destroy another orb in the air (shredding electro res). The Wenut will fall and have its res shredded to three elements (pyro/hydro/electro). Use XL's burst in Bennett's Q to snapshot. Snapshot Guoba E to shred pyro res further. Use Raiden's burst and go ham.
Depending on how well your characters are built, you may need one or two full rotations of the Wenut's moves to defeat it.
There are probably 4 star teams that can kill the Wenut in the time frame, but the Wenut is a boss that becomes easier to kill with 5 star characters (especially Raiden), much more so than most other bosses in the abyss.
Besides Raiden, Yelan, other 'autumn' (pyro/electro/hydro/cryo) elemental dps can also defeat the Wenut, such as Yoimiya, Yae, etc. The dendro rational team with Nahida in lieu of XL is feasible too, but the wind orbs will not be able to shred dendro, so the Wenut will tend to have higher dendro res compared to pyro res in the weakened state. Of course, if you have c2 Nahida for def shred that is a different story.
The Wenut is universally hated by the community and would probably win the title as the most disgusting boss in the abyss to date.
The blessings buff dendro and quicken. One side has ruin machines infused with electro (12-1), consecrated beasts, and the algorithm matrix. The other side feature aoe mobs (including triple maguu kenki). Use Alhaitham/Rational first half, Xiao second half.
Geo rifthounds return. The other side features the prism cubes (want quicken) and jadeplume. Use Itto and rational.
They finally killed zhong li with the rifthounds and anti-shield shadowy husks. But yet again zhong li was never meta to begin with and was never used much in abyss compared to top tier supports like Bennett. This is an excellent example of kicking someone when they are down, which is exactly what zhong li deserved, like Kautalya in the 3.2 story quest, given that public opinion is completely against zhong li.
When you're dealing with slimebuckets like the USA imperialists and their capitalist cronies, you got to learn some of their bad political habits: do the opposite of whatever they are doing, whenever your opponent tries to be nice to you mercilessly attack them, oppress your enemy so that they never get the chance to celebrate. When you are fighting a long term battle, you got to think like a long term fighter too. And part of that is striking their weakspot and slapping their face at the right moment. Whatever you call it: alternative warfare, guerilla warfare, etc. it takes a different kind of mindset than just bashing your way head-on into the battlefield.
Another favorite tactic of the USA: control the media, manipulate public opinion, and brainwash the masses. There is a vision and directive that comes all the way up the greasy political ladder from some high-level leadership in the USA deep state. They want to force the public to obey and submit to that vision and be completely aligned with it. Any dissenter will be attacked, doxed, and harrassed, and the deep state will abuse all its levers of power to oppress the divergent. The vision of the deep state is to drown out all other opposing voices, which contradicts the fundamental tenets of the so-called democracy that the USA is supposedly based on. All this democracy bullshit is a political slogan used by the elites to justify their oppression of the plebians. They do not care about the lives of the common folk. All they do is put on a show to serve their own political interests and themselves. They claim to be helping the people, to be egalitarian, to have a 'flat' structure, but in reality the only people that benefit are those up above: the elites, the capitalists, the imperialists and their crony puppets.
That said, the first half of floor 12 suits dendro national quite well (Nahida + Raiden + Yelan + Bennett). And Yoimiya is excellent for defeating the thunder creature in the second half. Nahida is also excellent for the thunder boss to proc spread, making a Yoimiya-Nahida team (Yoimiya-Nahida-Yelan) quite formidable against it.
Straightforward like last time. Bringing an electro character helps for the prism boss. Bringing Collei and DMC to proc quicken is fine but not needed to 9 star floor 12. Bringing tighnari will actually hurt your overall dps as nari is worse than Collei and DMC. This is reflected in nari's low abyss usage stats.
Abyss is pretty straightforward. It introduces the new ruin dino/drake and the fungi bird. Characters like ganyu and tighnari got nerfed as their attacks can easily miss the fungi and ruin drake. On the other hand, Itto is an excellent option for dealing with these enemies. Yoimiya is also good, and Venti can pull in the fungi enemies. As always Xiao is top tier meta whereas things like ayaka or ganyu are below meta.
Huge buffs for pyro and anemo. Great for Diluc, Yoimiya, Xiao, etc.
Floor 11 buffs claymore users and also features rock shield hilichurls. This is a big win for Xiao, Itto, Diluc, Eula, etc. mains. Floor 11 also has the rifthounds, so rip zhongli.
Floor 12 first half is a cakewalk. Second half features single target enemies. So big win for Yoimiya mains. Second half chamber 1 applies cryo debuff on enemies, and chamber 2 has the maguu, so rip ganyu.
In this version's abyss, Vermillion (辰砂往生录), Xiao's set, became the first NEW artifact set to be offered as a completion reward.
Anemo meta. Floor 11 gives huge Anemo damage boost. Can hit 100k or more on Xiao plunge attacks. Floor 12 first half needs hydro for the pyro lectors on 12-3. Mona, Childe, even Barbara are great options. First half also favors crowd control units like Venti, Sucrose as most of the enemies can be pulled and lifted. Second half has heavier enemies and favors AoE characters. All of the chambers have two or more enemies. Floor 12-3 second half needs cryo for hydro lectors. So Chongyun is good option. Floor 12-2 second half features an interesting trio of Electro lector, Pyro lector, and Hydro herald. Anemo is good for swirling the elements and breaking the shields simultaneously. Cryo breaks hydro shield, hydro breaks pyro shield, and pyro breaks electro shield. One can also use anemo to swirl the pyro and electro to break the electro shield (swirl prioritizes pyro over electro). So Floor 12 second half is good for freeze teams like Shenhe, Chongyun, Mona, etc. Mona is good on either half. Even a Xiao-Chongyun-Mona-Jean team works for full clearing the floor.
This is the type of abyss where Zhongli is not needed at all. But yet again, no abyss ever needs Zhongli in the first place. Anemo units carry all the way.
Ayaka and Ayato will struggle as they have huge energy issues and expensive 80 cost bursts.
Version 2.5 is a pretty simple abyss on the first half. The second half features the new bathysmal vishaps (from Enkanomiya) and the Golden rifthound boss. First half has electro rifthounds, while second half has the geo rifthound. Similar to Version 2.3 abyss, this abyss benefits electro teams 1st half and geo teams 2nd half. For example: Yae (the new character) and Raiden teams for 1st half, Itto and Xiao double geo teams for 2nd half.
Non-meta inferior midget characters like Ganyu and Ayaka will struggle Floor 12-1-2 as it is difficult for them to group up the vishaps.
Floor 12
Half 1: Perpetual Mechanical Array (pma), Primo Geovishap (pyro infusion), Ruin machines
Half 2: Pyro lector (some geo rifthound whelps), 2 Hydro heralds, 1 Maguu Kenki
Neither side particularly favors Pyro since the geovishap will have increased pyro res and the pyro lector has a pyro shield. So Hu Tao will struggle. That said, some people still 9 star it with pyro dps like Yoimiya.
Let's first discuss half 2 since this half basically forces you to bring certain characters. Use hydro for the pyro lector. If struggling with time, use two hydro characters (if available). Also bring a healer to deal with the rifthounds and the damge over time (dot) dealt by the lector. Use cryo for the hydro herald (e.g. Chongyun). Similarly, using two cryo characters may help clear the chamber more easily. You would think the 2nd half is for freeze teams, but then the big fat Lv. 100 maguu kenki in chamber 3 cannot be frozen, and it can block ranged attacks. Just bring enough dps. It appears that Genshin's intention was to make half 2 favorable for the featured characters Shenhe and Chongyun.
In the 1st half, some enemies will have the 'Honed Spirit' effect. If you attack them with normal attacks, they can lose up to 30% all RES (which resets periodically). All of these enemies (pma, vishap, ruin machines) have increased Physical RES, but if you want to use Eula, feel free. Eula could be more useful in the 2nd half against the maguu kenki (but will need other supports to deal with the lector and herald).
Xiao works fantastically for either side. People have 9 starred abyss using Xiao on either the 1st or 2nd half. For Itto, the 2nd half seems more favorable with the geo rifthounds and also the fact that the geovishap on the 1st half has increased Geo RES. That said, people have cleared the 1st half with a C6 Itto.
If using Venti put him on the 2nd half in a freeze team since the 1st half features entirely heavy enemies. Otherwise, use Sucrose or anemo on the freeze team for buffing.
For the 1st half just bring any dps team: Xiao teams, Itto teams, Raiden national are teams that work from experience. For the 2nd half, you basically need a cryo and a hydro, preferably 2 cryo characters for the hydro herald. The cryo characters can be Chongyun, Shenhe, Diona, Rosaria, etc. The 4th slot can be anything: Xiao, Yoimiya, Sucrose all work.
Whales with C6 characters can do anything. People have used C6 Xiao with just Kazuha, Bennett, and Raiden to clear the 2nd half (no hydro, no cryo characters) with 9 stars. C6 Xiao simply did so much damage that having the appropriate element to deal with the shield did not even matter.
Floor 12
Half 1: Electro rifthounds and geovishaps
Half 2: Geo rifthounds and triple maguu kenki
Half 1 teams: Raiden national, Beidou, etc.
Half 2 teams: Itto geo, Xiao double geo, etc.
Electro and Geo dps have a big boost from the rifthounds losing a lot of res (\(20-30=-10\)% for whelps, \(25-65=-40\)% for big hounds). At least for the big rifthounds (the hp sponges/tanks), this amounts to a \(1.2/.75 = 1.6\) multiplicative increase in damage, which is quite broken (it's around or a bit more than a Bennett buff, except basically permanent). So this abyss was very gimmicky, greatly awarding electro and geo damage dealers specifically.
The maguu kenki cannot be frozen. Having aoe to deal with the triple maguu kenki helps. Beidou works very well when there are exactly 2 enemies, which does happen in the chambers of half 1.
Because of corrosion from the rifthounds, having heavy healers like Qiqi, Jean, Kokomi, or even Barbara is quite useful, if not a must since the corrosion bleeds through shields.
The theme of Version 2.3 was to buff Geo dps and healers through the new artifact set (husk/clam) and the abyss.