MiHoYo seems to have taken a page out of the leakers own playbook. [emoji]
So last thing first, people were spreading rumors that with Yae's release we were definitely getting Ayato also. Now of course anybody who even spent a little of their brain power on this would know why that wouldn't happen. We have yet to hear anything else about Ayato since v2.0 so suddenly dropping his banner and in the same update as a known character who's been anticipated that whole time is dumb. MiHoYo has made plenty of moves that worked against their earnings sure but they aren't this brand of dumb.
Anyway a few days ago MiHoYo took to Twitter to put up this preview art for Ayato and immediately those leakers threw up their arms in victory saying this is confirmation that Ayato has released in v2.5! On top of that some conspiracy theorists also tried to claim that it was because of all their efforts to hype up Ayato's banner release that "MiHoYo was forced to release Ayato early!"
Side note: Now that the livestream happened it's much more likely they revealed Ayato because of this.
Before the Ayato thing there were the other leakers who claimed that Kazuha for some reason was rerunning with Yae and Ei. Because that makes sense. [emoji] Yae and Ei know each other very well. Kazuha is that guy who had a friend who challenged the Shogun that one time and was Hitotachi'd and so he joined up the resistance. If anything Ei might remember him because he was able to use 2 Visions to block Hitotachi that other time but even then that was the Shogun and Ei barely knew what was going on with that.
So then because that banner releasing made no sense the leakers realized their mistake and went on damage control claiming that "MiHoYo removed the Kazuha rerun last minute."
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Personally I had guessed that since v2.5 would focus on Yae that the reruns would be Ei and Ayaka but then I thought Ayaka might make more sense in reference to the resistance so that's where I'd place Kazuha's rerun and alongside like Itto and the future character Kuki who relates to Itto. I didn't catch the Kokomi because I totally thought she'd be unrelated to them but what MiHoYo ended up doing works on that logic. Who relates to Yae? Yae is the head of the Narukami Shrine and in terms of my theory on the Archon Quest's original outcome Inazuma was left divided into Narukami and Watatsumi which means Kokomi is her opposite as the head of the Sangonomiya Shrine.
Also I pegged it with 3 instead of 4 banners but the reasoning is a little different. I pegged Ayaka because she relates to Yae and I couldn't figure out who else would work for a 4th banner. Now it's Kokomi but she also relates to Yae in this case and it's likely Ayaka can't really fit into what's going to be happening and that's why she can't work as a 4th. I wonder if there would have been a way to fit her and Kokomi in. Maybe for their rereruns if MiHoYo cares that much about story/event ties for second reruns. (Well they did star Childe in his rererun and Zhongli's week of cameos works out for his inclusion in this update.) If the Character Quests reunite Inazuma that should allow a Yae, Ei, Kokomi, Ayaka rerun. But at the same time they'd probably be broken up into sets with new characters haha.
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Ok getting off topic. Right now with the Kazuha thing totally out the window the leakers have turned to v2.6 claiming that Kazuha will be running with Venti for some reason.
Long story short don't be a leaker for this game. MiHoYo's getting better at trolling you guys. [emoji]
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
