Open any banner and the rates screen tells you the same grim thing: 0.6% for a 5-star. Take that at face value and the math is brutal — at a flat 0.6%, the average number of pulls to land one 5-star is 1 ÷ 0.006, about 167. Two and a half full pity cycles. Nobody who has played for a month believes that, and they're right not to. The actual average in Genshin is roughly 62 pulls, not 167. The published rate isn't a lie exactly, but it's a lie by omission: it's the rate for the early pulls only, and almost nobody's 5-star comes from those. The real engine is a cliff called soft pity that the rates screen never mentions. Once you understand the four moving parts — the flat base rate, the soft-pity ramp, the hard-pity guarantee, and the 50/50 — every one of these games stops feeling like a slot machine and starts looking like a budget you can actually plan against.
Why 0.6% Doesn't Mean What You Think
Here's the trick the rates screen plays. That 0.6% is real, but it only applies while your pity counter is low. In Genshin and Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, your per-pull odds sit flat at 0.6% for a long stretch — pull 1, pull 30, pull 70, all the same 0.6%. If the rate stayed there forever, 167 average pulls would be correct and these games would be unplayable.
It doesn't stay there. At a specific pull — 74 in Genshin, 75 in Star Rail and ZZZ, 66 in Wuthering Waves — the per-pull rate stops being flat and starts climbing hard, every single pull, until it hits 100%. That climb is soft pity, and it's where almost every 5-star you've ever pulled actually came from.
The size of the jump is the part people underestimate. In Genshin the moment you cross into soft pity at pull 74, your odds don't nudge up — they leap from 0.6% to about 6.6%, more than a tenfold increase in a single pull. Then they add roughly another 6% every pull after that: ~12.6% at pull 75, ~18.6% at pull 76, and so on, smashing into a guaranteed 100% by pull 90. Wuthering Waves does the same thing starting at convene 66, jumping from 0.8% to about 8.8% and climbing to its guarantee at 80.
This is why the average pull count to your first 5-star in Genshin is about 62, not 167 — the vast majority of pulls resolve inside that 74-to-90 ramp, not during the flat 0.6% stretch. The base rate describes the boring part of the curve that rarely decides anything. Soft pity describes the part that actually pays out.
The Four Parts Every Player Conflates
People throw "pity" around like it's one thing. It's four, and mixing them up is where the confusion (and the bad budgeting) comes from.
1. Base rate. The flat per-pull chance you're shown — 0.6% in Genshin, Star Rail and ZZZ character banners, 0.8% in Wuthering Waves. It holds only until soft pity begins, and it's the least important number on the screen.
2. Soft pity. The ramp. After a fixed pull count, your odds climb steeply every pull. This is not a guarantee and not a separate currency — it's just the base rate accelerating. Most 5-stars land here.
3. Hard pity. The hard ceiling. If you somehow reach it without a 5-star, the next pull is a guaranteed 5-star, 100%. It's pull 90 on most character banners, pull 80 on most weapon banners. You will essentially never reach it without soft pity firing first, but it's the number that caps your worst case.
4. The 50/50. A separate coin flip that happens after you've already won a 5-star. On a featured character banner, the 5-star you just got has a 50% chance of being the banner unit and a 50% chance of being a random standard character. Lose it, and a failsafe kicks in: your next 5-star on that banner is guaranteed to be the featured one. So the 50/50 is not about whether you get a 5-star — soft and hard pity already settled that. It's about whether the 5-star you get is the one you wanted.
The single most common mistake is treating the 50/50 as part of the drop rate. It isn't. You can hit hard pity at pull 90 with a 100% guaranteed 5-star and still walk away with the wrong character because you lost the coin flip. Two independent systems, stacked.
Every Game's Numbers, Side by Side
These four games share the same skeleton — flat base rate, soft-pity ramp, hard-pity guarantee, a featured split — but the exact thresholds differ, and those differences are what make one game feel kinder than another. The table below uses the precise values each of our calculators runs on (character/agent/resonator banners). Note the pattern: lower hard pity and higher base rate both mean fewer pulls on average, which is why Wuthering Waves and ZZZ's weapon channels feel lighter than Genshin's.
| Game (character banner) | Base rate | Soft pity starts | Hard pity | Featured split | Failsafe after a loss? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genshin Impact | 0.6% | Pull 74 | Pull 90 | 50/50 | Yes |
| Honkai: Star Rail | 0.6% | Warp 75 | Warp 90 | 50/50 | Yes |
| Zenless Zone Zero | 0.6% | Signal 75 | Signal 90 | 50/50 | Yes |
| Wuthering Waves | 0.8% | Convene 66 | Convene 80 | 50/50 | Yes |
The Weapon Banners Quietly Change the Rules
Weapon and Light Cone channels are where the games stop looking identical. They run their own base rates, their own soft-pity starts, and — crucially — their own featured splits, which is why people who've only pulled characters get blindsided.
Genshin's Weapon banner starts at a 0.7% base, soft pity at pull 63, hard pity at 80, and a 75/25 split toward the featured weapons via the Epitomized Path. Star Rail's Light Cone warp runs 0.8% base, soft pity at warp 65, hard pity at 80, also 75/25 with a failsafe. ZZZ's W-Engine channel is the friendliest weapon banner in the group: a full 1.0% base rate — higher than any other weapon banner here — soft pity at signal 65, hard pity at 80, and the same 75/25 split with failsafe. That extra base rate front-loads your odds, which is a real part of why ZZZ has the reputation of being miHoYo's most generous gacha.
Wuthering Waves throws out the coin flip entirely on weapons. Its Featured Weapon convene is 100% featured — there is no 50/50, no 75/25, no fate points to accumulate. You hit your 80-convene hard pity and the 5-star weapon is the one you wanted, guaranteed, every time. It's the single cleanest weapon banner across all four games, and worth knowing before you compare "how many pulls for the weapon" between titles.
| Game (weapon channel) | Base rate | Soft pity starts | Hard pity | Featured split |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genshin (Weapon / Epitomized Path) | 0.7% | Pull 63 | Pull 80 | 75/25 |
| Star Rail (Light Cone) | 0.8% | Warp 65 | Warp 80 | 75/25 |
| ZZZ (W-Engine) | 1.0% | Signal 65 | Signal 80 | 75/25 |
| Wuthering Waves (Weapon) | 0.8% | Convene 66 | Convene 80 | 100% featured |
The Pity Counter Carries Over — and That's Worth Real Money
Two things carry between banners, and both are easy to forget at exactly the wrong moment.
First, your pity counter. It does not reset when a banner ends. If you end a Genshin character banner at pity 70 without a 5-star, that 70 transfers to the next character banner intact — you walk in already deep in the ramp, sometimes one pull from soft pity. The same is true for Star Rail warps, ZZZ signals, and Wuthering Waves convenes, as long as it's the same banner type. What does not transfer is pity across banner types: your character pity and your weapon pity are completely separate counters, and pulling on one never touches the other.
Second, and this is the one people throw away: your guaranteed status carries over too. If you lost the 50/50 on the last banner, you are sitting on a guaranteed featured pull for the next one. That guarantee is bankable value. The worst thing you can do is panic-pull on a banner you don't care about while holding a guarantee, because spending that 5-star resets the coin flip and you've burned a guarantee on a character you didn't want.
The practical read: a lost 50/50 is not a loss. It's a deposit. Your next featured 5-star on that banner type is locked in, which is exactly why the worst-case cost to guarantee a featured character is two hard-pity cycles — up to 180 pulls in Genshin, Star Rail and ZZZ, or 160 in Wuthering Waves — and almost never anywhere near that in practice.
So What Should You Actually Budget?
Forget the 0.6%. Here are the numbers that matter when you're deciding whether to pull.
To any 5-star: average about 62 pulls in Genshin from a fresh counter, because soft pity does the heavy lifting. The other games are in the same neighborhood, a touch lower where the base rate is higher or hard pity is earlier.
To the featured character (accounting for the 50/50 and the failsafe): average about 93 pulls in Genshin. You win the coin flip roughly half the time and stop near 62; you lose it the other half and grind through a second cycle. The average of those two paths is what lands you around 93.
Worst case to guarantee the featured character: up to 180 pulls in Genshin, Star Rail and ZZZ (two full 90-pull cycles), or 160 in Wuthering Waves (two 80-cycles). This is the number to save toward if you absolutely cannot miss — it's the ceiling, not the expectation, and most runs finish far short of it.
The gap between 'average' and 'worst case' is the whole game. If you have 90 pulls saved on a fresh Genshin banner, you're guaranteed at least one 5-star (you'll reach hard pity), but only about a coin flip's chance it's the featured one. With 180, the featured unit is effectively locked. Knowing which side of that line your wallet is on is the entire planning decision — and it's exactly what a calculator settles in two seconds instead of two hours of forum reading.
Run Your Own Numbers
The mental model is the easy part; the exact percentage for your specific pity, guarantee state, and pull budget is where a calculator earns its place. Each of these runs the real per-pull ramp — not the flat base rate — so the odds it gives you are the ones the game is actually using.
If you play Genshin, the Genshin pity calculator takes your current pity, your 50/50 status, and your Primogem budget and returns your true chance of the featured 5-star, plus the average and worst-case pulls. The Honkai: Star Rail warp calculator does the same for character and Light Cone warps, including that 75/25 Light Cone split most players misjudge. For ZZZ, the Zenless Zone Zero signal calculator handles both the Exclusive Agent channel and the friendlier 1.0% W-Engine channel. And if you're on Kuro's side of the fence, the Wuthering Waves convene calculator bakes in the 0.8% base, the convene-66 soft pity, and the 100%-featured weapon banner that makes weapon planning trivial.
Punch in your real pity counter from your in-game history, not a guess. The whole point of understanding soft pity is to stop pulling on hope and start pulling on a number — and the number is always worth checking before you spend the currency you spent a month saving.