Should you pull for Ellen Joe or Zhu Yuan in Zenless Zone Zero?

If you are chasing characters in Zenless Zone Zero, then you will constantly be wondering who might be the best option to go after. With two banners on the way containing Ellen Joe and Zhu Yuan, it’s time to decide which one you want to try and summon.

Should you pick Ellen Joe or Zhu Yuan?

If you want someone who is going to be a strong DPS in the early life of the game, pick Ellen. If you are happy to invest in a character that is likely to grow in importance over time, pick Zhu Yuan. Now, there is a lot to unpack in this decision-making, but it really just boils down to how they performed in the CBT3, and the habits of the HoYoverse dev teams that work on their various games.

Ellen is an Ice character, giving her access to Freeze and Shatter effects, and both of those are pretty powerful right now. She also has high armor penetration, which is great for taking out tougher enemies. For high-skill players, Ellen has good dodge follow-ups that are the focus of a lot of her kit, and she has good I-frame abuse using her special tail attacks. So, Ellen will be a character that we want on-field quite a bit to fully take advantage of her synergies, and she is probably the best pure DPS in the game at launch.

Zhu Yuan, on the other hand, is an Ether champ and will have the Corrupted Attribute that causes enemies to take more damage from all sources for a period of time. This is great because it is an automatic damage buff to the rotations from all characters in the party.

There is also the fact that historically, the first characters tend to be very strong for the early life of a HoYoverse game but then fall off over time as balance patches and changes to the game kick in, and the second Banner characters tend to fare better in this process. Ellen is undoubtedly a powerful option for the first champ, but it really does seem like Zhu Yuan will be the better long-term investment for players who plan on sticking with the game.

Ultimately, there are two other important factors to consider. The first is what other characters you get and what you like when it comes to character design. If you have a solid DPS character that you are happy with, then there is nothing wrong with just waiting to see what other characters are revealed. You also don’t need to rush into making any decision, as you can pull any character on the last day of their Banner if you make sure you have the resources. You should also think about what you like. I often think you don’t want to fall into the trap of min-maxing every little piece of these games. If you like a character design, play that character, efficienies be damned!

While it is, of course, perfectly possible to pull for both characters until you get them, most of us need to fight the urge to whale out, especially folks who would like to play in a free-to-play way. These will have a limited number of pulls, and you will need to think carefully about what to do with them.

If you want to stay up to date with what is coming in future Signal Searches, we will track that in our Banner guide.