Well, I misread then. But I have another objection to the new/correct reading.
The cycle's not absolute. Another basic principle is that an excess can reverse each cycle. Too much Wood can overcontrol Fire, like if you try to skip tinder when making a campfire. You can drown a tree, or break a levee, even though Water feeds Wood and is diverted by Earth. Dhartiri vs. Zhengui is definitely in this category.
Again, not reading it right and adding a lot of wrong system baggage. Theres two main types of relationships:
-Augmenting - Wood Augments Fire. Wood makes Fire stronger. Wood itself is not necessarily affected.
-Restraining - Wood Restrains Earth. Wood makes Earth do things other than Earthly things.
We can ignore the Excess portion, because everyone present are peers and so they don't pack enough dakka to actually get to the overloaded point. The important part here is that these are innate to the types of actions that each one does. You don't need a special elemental advantage as long as they are doing In Theme Things.
What does this mean for what we saw?
Dhartiri vs Lanhua:
-Lanhua uses an Earth defense, which relies on enduring and shrugging off attacks via a Bonus Health Box/Health Regen strategy. Basically this relies on the defender spending less energy on undoing or ignoring the damage than the attacker spends.
-Dhartiri uses a Wood offense, which relies on leaching resources from the opponent using a Damage Over Time strategy to recharge Dhartiri. In addition, we know Wood attacks uses a lot of unhealable or ongoing damage.
Result is clear. Lanhua's strategy is hard countered because it just feeds Dhartiri. We broke Lanhua the same way ourselves by leeching to death.
You don't need special type advantage powers. Just the willingness to use agonizing damage over time effects.
So what about Dhartiri vs Zhengui? The same leeching roots strategy isn't a winner, because Zhengui uses a Wood/Fire strategy of regenerating low damage hits cheaply and burning away anything that gets onto his shell. It comes down to a straight power contest...which Dhartiri is probably going to win.
...and then Zhengui explodes. While she's rooted in him.
Dodge THAT.
