I had initially gone in with:
Team 1) Hutao Raiden Zhongli Xingqiu
Team 2) Ganyu Xiangling Diona Venti

But I had to swap Raiden out with Xiangling because I just didn't have the damage for 12-1 3 star. I still clear 12-1 part one with about 8:48 remaining, which is what I was doing with this original team 1, meaning Raiden wasn't really helping my "rotations" that much. Rotations just meaning she was not worth taking the extra time to swap to her and use her in terms of time save potential.

Part of this is because she messes up vaporize, part of this is just simply the fact that she goes so well with Ganyu's ult, buffing that with her skill, and that Ganyu needs help generating particles, which Raiden's ult does, and her ult is a nice nuke in its own right.

Coming into 12-2 versus Klee/Xingqiu, wow, I can feel the upgrade. This is triple crown hutao with homa and about 44%/200% crit ratio. She makes light work of Maguu Kenki, making for a nice and comfortable 3-star 12-2.

Coming into 12-3, this is the 3 star that has eluded me the past 3 Spiral runs in a row. I read in Teyvat Guild discord server someone say "if you strike a Ruin Sentinel (the little ones) directly, it has a chance to teleport away." This wastes precious time. So I go for the ruin guards, hunter, and grader first, and any splash damage I get on the ruin sentinels in the meantime is great. Team two barely squeaks it in popping everyone's ults as I get them, but I get the dub with "a cool 1-2 seconds to spare," as GiantGrantGames would say.

I will definitely be going for all 36 stars going forward. This is a huge confidence boost. I could have gotten 36 stars on the last abyss after picking up Hutao and building her, but I wanted to wait for it to just happen organically like this. I don't like having to go back and start all over from 12-1 with either new teams or simply having to restart just to take my time and farm supers and have everyone at a good amount of HP at the end of 12-2. And then have to put in attempts at 12-3. Now that I'm powerful enough to do it, and not only that, but do it all in one go without changing teams or starting over, it feels so good.