What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[AziraSyuren]

He had a strong arc sure, but a lot of people were turned off from him after 5.3 once he was demoted to nothing more than a character worshipper and slice of life character. It’s subjective in the end i suppose, i certainly thought EW just focused on his worst parts and tried to pander to the twitter crowd by giving him countless adorable moments like “haha catboy eats borger drooollll.”

I think that, despite the fawning, he retained most of his competency and agency in EW, so it's not as egregious as it could be. His post 5.3 characterization wasn't that bad either because it was pretty clear that he was just getting used to finally being able to be who he was all along.

However, as I said, several of the Scions were actually benefitted by EW in some pretty significant ways, so it's definitely unfortunate that the new guy didn't get as much focus. They could've easily done a lot more for him, but they didn't.

I agree with this. I have a strong bias for solid world-building over character-centric stories, if I am honest, and I think Oda does the former better. I am not sure to what degree EW is really reflective of Ishikawa's work, as there seems to be a myriad of factors which compromised the quality, but I'll say I preferred the sort of tension-laden writing that Maehiro brought to life in HW.

I think it is pretty reflective of Ishikawa's work, and not necessarily in a bad way. She's extremely good at making characters likable and emphasizing their humanity and a lot of EW's problems were born from the fact that she seemed to try too hard to make too many characters likable. She just bit off more than she could chew. Imagine how much easier the Sundering would've been to swallow if Ancient society was, at its core, nearly as unpleasant as the Garlean society was. It wouldn't have been morally justified but it wouldn't have been as bad as the whole "throwing away a perfect society for bad reasons" thing.

All I see is people saying they don't like the character for their own reasons. And there's existing fans of his here also who are claiming they dislike the trajectory he took as of 5.4.

So do explain whose "copium" this is?

It's copium from the people who pretend he's not as popular as he is.

Sadly people highlight the bad more than the good with characters, while I didn't like his 5.4 or 5.5 versions, his 6.0 character, for me, was phenomenal, he and only HE (honorable mention: estinien) was the most reliant and competent out of ALL the scions saving dozens of people repeatedly, he had many badass moments in EW, moments that was highlighted in the whole expansion, during ultima thule, while that zone is a subject of controversy, his speech where he project the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" unto himself was also phenomenal, the only civilization among all we dealt with that looked convinced by what is being offered were the omicron.

But oh nyo he ate a boorger and had sparkly eyes for 30 seconds, bad character > : (

Absolutely. That one scene in Thavnair was enough to show that he wasn't really that much different from how he used to be, he just didn't get enough focus outside of that and Ultima Thule.