Many Honkai: Star Rail Character Rank Quite High on Its ‘Tier List’

Like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail is the sort of game where tiers honestly don’t matter much for characters. Due to party choices and character roles, people might be useful regardless of where they’d fall in the meta. If you’re farming or going through the story, you might have different needs. Also, the team you’re using influences how “good” someone could be too. Now that we’ve had time to spend and accumulate various four and five-star characters in Honkai: Star Rail, we decided to put together a preliminary tier list going over what you can expect from certain characters. However, as we haven’t been lucky enough to pick up every five-star at Siliconera yet, our in-progress list will only assess characters we have firsthand knowledge of and will be updated as time goes by.

S-Tier

• Blade: Blade is a fantastic DPS. This is because of his Skill that allows him to sacrifice his own HP to deal damage to a group of enemies, a Talent that lets him deal follow-up damage as he builds stacks after taking damage either from himself or enemies, and how his HP helps increase the damage he deals. The best part is that even though he’s a blood knight, he has rather good survivability. Especially if you also got Luocha to pair with him.
• Bronya: Bronya is incredible as a supporter. She immediately brings someone up to act with a damage buff with her Skill, cleansing them as she does. She also gets guaranteed critical hits, which is handy. Also, she buffs the whole party with her Ultimate. She’s great in any situation.
• Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae: This alt is incredible because of how great it is against both single targets and groups of enemies. He is a skill point heavy character, since maximizing his attack means using his Skill repeatedly to power it up and change its effects and range. However, using his Ultimate lets you get Squama Sacrosancta stacks to use in place of SP for that Skill, which helps mitigate issues. He hits hard, and he hits often.
• Kafka: Kafka is a character that is only going to get stronger as more DOT allies are added to the game. Her Skill is devastating when enemies are suffering from DOT effects, as it causes them to immediately deal more damage. Not to mention her Talent lets her follow-up allies’ basic attacks and potentially Shock enemies, making it easier for her to deal more damage on her own turn.
• Luocha: Luocha is absolutely an incredible healer. This is because he can cast a healing field that dispels status effects and debuffs and heals, as well as can pop in to automatically heal people occasionally when they’re critical. He’s also just a strong healer in general, with his skill healing and cleansing when it does. He bests other healers too, due to his damage output and fact he’s an Imaginary unit with an AOE Ultimate attack in a game with a lot of enemies weak to that element.
• Natasha: Everyone gets Natasha for free, which is great because she is fantastic at healing and cleansing allies. While her heal only hits one person and Bailu’s has a “splash” effect that catches others, the regen effect is a very helpful bonus.
• Seele: Once you level up her Traces, Seele never stops attacking. She can just keep going, picking off enemies one-by-one. It’s fantastic.
• Silver Wolf: This “Bronya” variant is the best debuffer in the game. Whenever she attacks, no matter what kind it is, it will make the enemy it hits weaker in some way. More importantly, her Skill will insert an element of a party member into the enemy it hits if it isn’t already weak to it. It’s incredible.
• Tingyun: Tingyun is almost as amazing a supporter as Bronya, only in a slightly different way. Her skill blesses another party member to boost their damage and add lightning damage. But more importantly, she’s basically a battery. Whenever she uses her Ultimate, she’ll recharge the target’s energy by 50 and increase their attack.

A-Tier

• Bailu: Bailu is probably the best healer in the game right now, even though she can’t cleanse. This is because of her revival mechanic that can kick in once per battle. She also has the added bonus of healing people after they take a hit automatically, after updates.
• Gepard: What’s nice about Gepard is that he’s fantastic at shielding everyone, he gets great defense stats, his traces guarantee he’s targeted more often, and if he does somehow die, his Talent will revive and heal him. He’s also pretty good at dealing damage to enemies and freezing them.
• Himeko: Himeko is the character you want around when you start farming Caverns of Corrosion, Calcyxes, Simulated Universe, and really any area where you’ll fight groups of enemies. She does tons of damage, plus she’ll be able to follow-up ally attacks after breaking enemy weaknesses three times. Given she’s a Fire type, quite a few foes on Herta Space Station, Jarilo-VI, and the Xianzhou Luofu are susceptible.
• Jing Yuan: You’re basically getting two characters instead of one with Jing Yuan, with the Lightning Lord backing his attacks up and also hitting enemy groups. His single and multi-target attacks are fantastic. Plus, his Traces further increase his and Lightning Lord’s damage output. He’s at his best if you can get his signature Light Cone, though.
• Pela: Pela is fantastic for her ability to remove buffs from enemies with her Skill, then use her Ultimate to temporarily lower an enemy’s defense for two turns. This is all while dealing pretty solid Ice damage and maybe even restoring her own energy by debuffing foes.
• Trailblazer (Preservation):
• Welt: Welt is the only character dealing Imaginary damage in 1.0, so I’d say he’s pretty critical. However, he’s great at dealing damage and slowing an enemy down with his multi-hit skill, Imprisonment is fantastic for slowing enemies down further. Pair him up with a good Hunt character like Seele, and you’ll easily tear through enemies.

B-Tier

• Dan Heng: Dan Heng can be a great The Hunt damage dealer, especially if you boost his critical hit rate so he’s often reducing enemies’ speed with his Skill. Which in turn improves his Ultimate, since it deals more damage to slowed down enemies. But he’s best if you have someone nearby who also uses Abilities on him, like March 7th, Bronya, or Tingyun, so he gets a chance for his Wind attacks to get resistance penetration.
• March 7th: Okay, so, I personally have an E6 March 7th, and that HP regen effect for shielded characters is a game-changer. But even if you don’t have that, the fact she follows up attacks on shielded characters and does a pretty great job of freezing opponents is an incredible boon. Not to mention there are a lot of enemies on Herta Space Station, Jarilo-VI, and the Xianzhou Luofu weak to Ice damage, which helps tremendously.
• Serval: Serval is fantastic for many, many reasons. Her base damage is pretty great. But what is wonderful is when you use her Skill, then within two turns of that use her Ultimate. This is because her Skill has a very high chance of inflicting Shock damage over time on enemies, and the Ultimate makes that last two turns longer than it normally would. In addition to hitting multiple enemies, you’re guaranteeing continued DOT damage.
• Sushang: It’s sort of weird that Shushang is such a good Physical damage dealer compared to the Trailblazer (Destruction). She’s great about dealing single-target damage, with a guaranteed bonus hit if you break an enemy’s weakness. (You also have a chance of getting that even if you don’t.) Not to mention her Ultimate gives her the chance to attack twice in a row, given it Advances her next action.
• Yukong: Yukong is great in that she boosts the attack of herself and her allies, and she can also increase critical rates and damage if the Roaring Bowstrings status is available. However, it can be difficult to always make sure Roaring Bowstrings is at two stacks so you get the maximum benefit.

C-Tier

• Asta: Asta isn’t a bad supporter! Her Ultimate’s speed buff for the whole party is great. She’s also good at dealing Fire damage, with her Skill hitting one enemy, then hitting four more times on random opponents. But while speed is a critical stat, you really want other supporters like Bronya or Tingyun around instead. Or maybe even a Nihility character like Pela if you have her.
• Hook: Hook can be really helpful, but because she doesn’t act like you’d expect a Destruction character should, you may not want to use her over others? She can do AOE damage and apply Burn with her Skill, but only if you used her Ultimate before it. So what you’re really trying to do is constantly build up to using her Ultimate, then immediately following it with her Skill for the guaranteed AOE and Burn.
• Sampo: Sampo’s… fine? Like he’s an okay Nihility character who can deal some decent damage over time. Especially since it’s very likely you’ll apply Wind Shear with him, and his Ultimate makes DOT attacks deal even more damage to foes. But other than that, his damage output is lower than other, better Nihility folks.
• Trailblazer (Destruction): The best thing you can say about a Physical Trailblazer is that they cover that element and offer an option as to whether your Ultimate hits one enemy or everyone. But really, they’re only good for their AOE Skill’s damage to a group. And even then, there are much better AOE attackers who get a lot more out of that skill point.
• Qingque: I debated about whether Qingque should fall into B or C, because if luck is on your side she can be great! Her basic attack doesn’t recover Skill Points, but her drawing of mahjong tiles means she could deal a stronger than usual AOE attack. However, since her Skill deals with the tile element, and you could waste a skill point (that she won’t help regenerate) for no benefit. Her Ultimate lets deals decent damage and gives you our matching tiles when she uses it, but it takes so long to charge. If RNG blesses you, she’s great, but it’s too much of a risk.

D-Tier

• Arlan: Arlan works in a very specific way, which means being ready to make him sacrifice his HP to act as a blood knight to deal damage. You’ll have to have someone like Bailu or Natasha dedicated to keeping him alive. Considering how little damage he does for that constant babysitting, he’s not worth it.
• Herta: We have a lot of great Ice characters in Honkai: Star Rail already, as well as a lot of Erudition ones that hit multiple enemies, which means Herta falters in the tier list. If there are a lot of opponents, she can be great! But Pela and March 7th are better general four-star ice types, and she doesn’t deal enough damage to be as useful as other Erudition four-stars like Serval.

Honkai: Star Rail is available for PCs and mobile devices, and PS4 and PS5 versions are in development.