Here are the Best Light Cones and Relics for Ruan Mei in Honkai: Star Rail

When choosing Light Cones or Relics for Ruan Mei in Honkai: Star Rail, you should decide in advance how much you want to prioritize her Break Effect. Though she scales off it, building her as a more standard Harmony character is probably better in the long run.

Is Ruan Mei Support or a Sub-DPS?

For reference, Ruan Mei actually scales off of her Break Effect. That’s where her damage comes from when she activates Thanatoplum Rebloom and Somatotypical Helix. However, Ruan Mei is ultimately better as a support unit and not a sub-DPS.

While you should aim for a 180% Break Effect for optimum performance, you should not prioritize it over other stats such as SPD, Energy Regeneration, HP % or DEF %. Ruan Mei is kind of squishy, so keeping her alive is a bit more important than giving her Break Effect.

Here are the Best Light Cones for Ruan Mei in Honkai: Star Rail

• Past Self in Mirror
  As Ruan Mei’s signature Light Cone, this is her best-in-slot. It increases the wearer’s Break Effect by a whopping 60% at S1, as well as increases all allies’ DMG for three turns when she uses her Ultimate. It also recovers SP whenever her Break Effect is over 150%, and since Ruan Mei ideally wants 180%, she should hit that anyway.
• But the Battle Isn’t Over
  Because half of Ruan Mei’s utility is from her Ultimate, this is a good Light Cone for her, thanks to its Energy Regeneration buff. She can also recover SP when she uses her Ultimate. The ally who moves after she uses her Skill will also get an ATK boost, but since she can’t manipulate turn order, you might have to rely on SPD tuning to get that bonus on the character you want consistently.
• Planetary Rendezvous
  You should only give Ruan Mei this Light Cone if you plan on running her with an Ice DPS such as Jingliu. Since Ruan Mei is an Ice character, she will boost all Ice DMG that the party deals to enemies. Besides that, it has fairly good stats as a 4-star Light Cone.
• Memories of the Past
  If you don’t have Ruan Mei’s signature Light Cone, you can use this one as a substitute. It also increases her Break Effect, as well as regenerates Energy whenever she attacks. Technically speaking, Ruan Mei shouldn’t be attacking unless you run out of SP, so this Energy Regeneration effect might not come into play that often.
• Meshing Cogs
  Despite being a 3-star Light Cone, Meshing Cogs is a fantastic Harmony Light Cone because of its effect. It regenerates Energy every time Ruan Mei attacks an enemy or an enemy attacks her. Unfortunately, because it’s a 3-star Light Cone, it doesn’t really offer a lot in terms of stat buffs. So you should be careful when running this on Ruan Mei lest an enemy defeats her.

Here are the Best Relic Sets for Ruan Mei in Honkai: Star Rail

• 4-pc Thief of Shooting Meteor
  This is the best Relic Set for Ruan Mei because it passively increases Break Effect, as well as regenerates Energy whenever she inflicts Weakness Break. Ruan Mei isn’t likely to be the one inflicting Weakness Break, though. So you should prioritize getting yourself an Energy Regeneration Link Rope.
• 4-pc Messenger Traversing Hackerspace
  This is a generally good Relic Set for your support characters. It increases Ruan Mei’s SPD, as well as all allies’ SPD whenever she uses her Ultimate. This is on top of Ruan Mei’s existing SPD buff from her Talent.
• 4-pc Watchmaker, Master of Dreams
  A full set of the Watchmaker Relics boosts Ruan Mei’s Break Effect, as well as the Break Effect for the entire party when she uses her Ultimate on an ally. As of Version 2.2, not a lot of attackers actually rely on Break Effect. Only Xueyi does. But extra Break Effect might be useful with future teams or in certain challenge modes such as Pure Fiction.
• 2-pc Watchmaker, 2-pc Thief
  A chimera set of Watchmaker and Thief can greatly increase Ruan Mei’s Break Effect. This is useful not only for her innate kit, but it can also free up your Planar Ornaments space for sets other than Talia.
• 2-pc Thief of Shooting Meteor, 2-pc Messenger Traversing Hackerspace
  In my opinion, this chimera set is actually the best one you can give Ruan Mei in Version 1.6 because it provides the best of both worlds. You can’t reliably utilize the Thief’s 4-pc effect with Ruan Mei anyway, and Ruan Mei provides everyone with a SPD buff on her own. Granted, it is unfortunate to give up the extra SPD from the full Messenger set.
• Penacony, Land of the Dreams
  While an Ice DPS was a requirement for Planetary Rendezvous, it’s a suggestion for Penacony. Aside from Penacony giving a boost to Ice DMG, it also increases her Energy Regeneration. This is very important since you want to give Ruan Mei as little downtime as possible when it comes to her Ultimate.
• Talia: Kingdom of Banditry
  This is a very good Planar Ornament Set for Ruan Mei because it increases her Break Effect. However, if you’ve already attained 180% through her other Relics, then you can use something else. Remember that to utilize the full effect of Talia, you need to have a minimum of 145 SPD.
• Sprightly Vonwacq
  Like with Penacony, Sprightly Vonwacq gives Ruan Mei an Energy Regeneration boost, as well as Advances Forward her action when she has 120 SPD. This is not a particularly difficult threshold to reach, especially if you give her SPD main stat Feet Relics.

Honkai: Star Rail is available on PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. You can only get Ruan Mei when the “Floral Triptych” Character Event Warp is active in the game.