Best Support Characters To Use In Honkai: Star Rail

Forming the right team composition is one of the key aspects in Honkai: Star Rail’s gameplay. With the ever-increasing roster of playable units, different characters can have different synergies that allow you to take on any and all content, with some being ahead of the rest.

Supports are a sub-category of characters that focus on providing utility to your team, be it in the form of buffing, debuffing, healing, or shielding. Choose the right support character that fits with your team’s playstyle in order to ease your way through the game’s content.

Updated on December 01, 2024, by Sanyam Jain: With time, Honkai: Star Rail has seen various new character releases, and the meta has also shifted towards the importance of having the right supports more than the DPS themselves. With this in mind, we’ve updated this list with various new units.

14 Topaz and Numby

Topaz and Numby are a unique duo as they’re one of the first playable characters to be released as two units in one. After unlocking the necessary Traces, every part of Topaz and Numby’s kit is considered a follow-up attack, with Numby being the main event when using their Skill and Ultimate.

Despite being a Hunt character that excels at dealing decent single-target DMG, Topaz and Numby are best played when used as a support for other follow-up attack characters. Their Skill will inflict a debuff to a target enemy, which increases the DMG they receive from follow-up attacks by up to 55 percent.

13 Luocha

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Imaginary
• Path: Abundance
• Best played with: Blade, teams with Skill-Point hungry characters

Luocha is famed for being able to heal huge amounts of HP. Aside from that, he also brings other forms of utility by being able to cleanse debuffs from your team and even cancel buffs on multiple enemies.

He can deploy a field that will heal your entire team when any of your characters perform an attack, allowing you to get healed on the go. However, Luocha’s biggest selling point is that he never has to use any Skill Points, as his Skill can automatically trigger when one of your characters falls below 50 percent HP.

12 Pela

• Rarity: Four-Star
• Type: Ice
• Path: Nihility
• Best played with: Any character, especially Dr. Ratio, Jingliu, Acheron

Pela may be a rarity lower than most characters in this list, but she remains as a staple in many teams with her simple yet effective kit. Her main role in teams is to reduce the enemies’ DEF, as well as increase your team’s Effect Hit Rate and occasionally dispel buffs from enemies.

Pela’s Skill can also reduce a target enemy’s Ice RES with her fourth Eidolon, making her a great teammate for Ice characters.

Pela’s Ultimate is great for reducing the DEF of all enemies in the field. Additionally, since using her Skill isn’t necessary, she’s great for generating Skill Points, especially with a SPD-focused build.

11 Silver Wolf

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Quantum
• Path: Nihility
• Best played with: Any character, especially Seele, Qingque, Dr. Ratio

The genius hacker of the Stellaron Hunters has the unique ability to implant a Weakness that corresponds to your team’s Type to a target enemy. This mechanic allows your characters to fight enemies they aren’t initially strong against.

When Silver Wolf implants a Weakness to an enemy, their DMG RES to that Type will be reduced by 20 percent, and their All-Type RES will be reduced by an additional 10.5 percent.

Her Ultimate decreases the DEF of a target enemy by up to 48 percent for three turns. Meanwhile, any of her attacks can implant a random debuff on a target enemy, each having their independent durations: 11 percent ATK reduction, 8.8 percent DEF reduction, and 6.6 percent SPD reduction.

10 Tingyun

• Rarity: Four-Star
• Type: Lightning
• Path: Harmony
• Best played with: Characters that scale with ATK and rely on their Ultimate, especially Jing Yuan, Dan Heng: Imbibitor Lunae, Jingliu, Argenti

Another four-star in this list, Tingyun has remained as a valuable support character even with new five-star characters being released. Using her Skill will provide an ATK buff to a target ally, which scales with her own ATK.

Meanwhile, her Ultimate does two things: provide DMG Bonus to a target ally, and increase that ally’s Energy, helping them get their Ultimate faster. She’s also extremely efficient for generating Skill Points, as her ATK buff lasts for three turns. It’s important to remember that she won’t be able to provide Ultimate to characters like Acheron or Feixiao.

9 Huohuo

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Wind
• Path: Abundance
• Best played with: Any character, especially those that scale with ATK and rely on their Ultimate

The scaredy-cat (or fox) Judge of the Ten-Lords Commission, Huohuo, is another healer who can regenerate HP passively, making her a comfortable sustainer. She performs the following after using her Skill:

• Dispels one debuff from a target ally and heals them. At the same time, heals allies adjacent to the target.
• Gains two stacks, which decrease by one at the start of her turn. While Huohuo has stacks, characters will be healed and cleansed from debuffs at the start of their turn or when they use their Ultimate.

Aside from healing, Huohuo also functions as a semi-Harmony character with her Ultimate. Casting it will grant an ATK buff to the whole team, as well as regenerate everyone’s Energy.

8 Lingsha

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Fire
• Path: Abundance
• Best played with: Break-Based teams, but good with any team in general

Lingsha is arguably a better sustainer than most on this list, but her low placement is due to her niche usability in Break-Based teams. While you can use Lingsha in any team to keep everyone alive, you’ll still get a lot more value with the likes of Aventurine and Huohuo due to the buffs they can provide.

As for Lingsha, this unit is phenomenal at breaking the enemy’s Weakness if they have Fire weakness and deal a bunch of Super Break DMG on broken enemies. She can also consistently provide heals to your team, though you’ll have to use her Skill quite often as well.

7 Fu Xuan

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Quantum
• Path: Preservation
• Best played with: Any character, especially Blade, Jing Yuan

Fu Xuan is a special type of Preservation character, in the sense that she’s the only unit from the “shielding” Path that doesn’t provide any form of shielding. Instead, her utility focuses on DMG mitigation and allowing your fragile characters to take huge and hard-hitting attacks like it’s nothing.

Aside from DMG mitigation, the field from Fu Xuan’s Skill will also increase your team’s HP and CRIT Rate, as well as grant a one-time immunity to any Control Effects.

Her Skill places a field that will significantly reduce the DMG taken by her allies, while also absorbing some of that DMG herself. When she reaches below 50 percent HP, she can automatically heal herself to near full health if certain conditions are met, making her and her allies almost unkillable.

6 Bronya

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Wind
• Path: Harmony
• Best played with: Any team with low skill point cost

Bronya is arguably the most valuable five-star out of the standard roster, as well as one of the most powerful supports even with the release of newer ones. Her strength comes not just from her buffs, but also because of her ability to manipulate the turn order, and allow your characters to advance their action.

Using her Skill will make any target ally move directly after her, regardless of their SPD, while increasing their DMG and removing debuffs. Additionally, her Ultimate provides a teamwide ATK buff, and increases their CRIT DMG based on Bronya’s own CRIT DMG.

5 Aventurine

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Imaginary
• Path: Preservation
• Best played with: Any character

Our resident gambling enjoyer, Aventurine, serves as the best all-rounder sustainer in the game, and there are many reasons for this. Firstly, he can produce consistent shields for the entire party with her Skill and follow-up attacks, which usually trigger often enough to prevent you from using your Skill in most cases.

He can also increase the Crit DMG taken by one enemy with his Ultimate, which also adds Harmony elements to his kit. Essentially, if Aventurine is in your team, you wouldn’t have to worry about any character being knocked down.

4 Sparkle

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Quantum
• Path: Harmony
• Best played with: Any character, especially those who need a lot of Skill Points (Dan Heng: Imbibitor Lunae, Qingque, Seele)

Sparkle offers valuable buffs that greatly increase your characters’ DMG output, but what makes her the most broken support is her Skill Point restoration mechanic, allowing you to completely forget about Skill Points and just spam your Skills.

While Sparkle is in the team, the maximum number of Skill Points is raised to seven.

Using Sparkle’s Skill will cause a target ally’s action to Advance Forward by 50 percent, and increase their CRIT DMG based on her own CRIT DMG. Meanwhile, her Ultimate immediately restores four Skill Points and increases your DMG dealt every time you use a Skill Point.

3 Robin

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Physical
• Path: Harmony
• Best played with: Any team, especially Follow-up attack-based teams

You might notice a common trend of this list being majorly comprised of Harmony characters, which makes it obvious that this is one of the most broken paths in the game. Every character from this path has a place in the meta, with Robin being one of the best due to the sheer utility she can provide.

She increases party-wide DMG dealt with her Skill while also increasing everyone’s ATK with the Ultimate. However, the best part about her kit is the ability to be a sub-DPS since every ally’s ATK while Robin is in her Ultimate deals extra Physical DMG, which is guaranteed to Crit. She’s better in follow-up teams simply because she can get her Ultimate faster in them.

2 Ruan Mei

• Rarity: Five-Star
• Type: Ice
• Path: Harmony
• Best played with: Any character, especially with a Break-Based DPS

Ruan Mei is the very first limited character from the Path of The Harmony, and she did not disappoint. She’s also becoming better with nearly every update as more break-based units get released in the game. In fact, she’s not only able to offer a buff or two, but rather a multitude of things at the same time:

• 35.3 percent DMG Bonus
• 50 percent Weakness Break Efficiency
• 27 percent All-Type RES Penetration
• Can extend the duration of enemies’ Weakness Break and delay their action when they’re about to recover
• Deals Ice Break DMG any time an ally breaks an enemies Toughness Bar (Talent)
• 10.4 percent SPD increase
• In Simulated Universe, any character can attack an enemy’s Weakness even if their Type doesn’t match (Technique)

All of this allows your team to continuously weaken your enemies, especially with her Weakness Break Efficiency buff that lets you break Weaknesses faster. Additionally, Ruan Mei can also function as a DMG dealer, as she can deal Ice Break DMG even if she isn’t the one triggering the Weakness Break.

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