Honkai: Star Rail has a wide, eclectic cast of characters, with at least one being introduced every update. However, just because there are many faces on the roster, it does not mean that all of them are created equal. In fact, many characters lately have followed similar trends in kit design, leaving other team concepts left behind. Between build homogeny and power creep, past Honkai: Star Rail characters, and potentially future additions to the game, could suffer if current design trends continue.
Recent additions to the game, like the highly-anticipated Tingyun redesign character Fugue, have supported compositions that have consistently received new units throughout the entirety of the Penacony arc. The constant influx of new abilities that are designed to one-up each other and fill similar roles makes the team building process monotonous, while also forcing players to pull for the latest unit to keep their favorite play style relevant in new content. Without variety being introduced to the game, only the chosen few groups of characters will thrive as enemies get tougher in future updates.
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The Current Trends of Star Rail Characters
Lately, the main build concepts that have received many new characters are follow-up attack and break effect. In recent updates, both of these teams received new additions in the form of Feixiao, who is currently one of the best DPS units in Honkai: Star Rail, as well as Lingsha who fits into the break category, and several others.
Since the launch of Penacony and Version 2.0, these compositions have received several incredibly powerful additions to push them much further ahead when compared to other concepts. Feixiao, Aventurine, Robin, Jade, and (to a degree) Sunday have all catered towards follow-up, allowing these units to attack multiple times a round if conditions are met. In the case of Robin, her supporting ability skyrockets whenever she is paid with units that attack multiple times.
Meanwhile, Boothill, Firefly, Lingsha, Rappa, and Fugue all support the break effect, allowing for massive damage when destroying enemy toughness shields. Even the beloved fan-favorite Harmony Trailblazer revolved around major increases in break effectiveness for the entire squad. The amount of damage some of these characters can deal really sets them above previous units, especially ones introduced prior to Version 2.0. While not every single character introduced recently falls into one of these two categories, the majority of them do. That leaves any team compositions that do not fit into one of these two archetypes piecing together a group that will struggle to complete higher end content.
Power Creep in Honkai: Star Rail
As with many gacha games, the nature of Honkai: Star Rail means most characters tend to be a step above similar characters to incentivize pulling for them. However, this tends to mean that older units get outclassed by more recent units. Yunli is a perfect example of this: Yunli’s kit is essentially just a stronger version of Clara’s abilities. While Clara is a standard 5-star character, this does mean that if someone already has Yunli, losing a 50/50 to her is more detrimental. Of course, Clara is still very good in her own right, but they would essentially just be building two teams to serve the same exact niche.
Similarly, Lingsha could be seen as a straight upgrade to Gallagher, a popular healer in break effect teams despite being a 4-star unit. She not only heals her team, but also increases break damage done to targets debuffed by her, while dealing incredible damage with follow-up attacks. When considering how much Lingsha adds to any team comp she is in compared to other healer units, it’s hard to argue against using her, except for certain situations and team compositions. Similar arguments can be made about HuoHuo, who outclasses units such as Luocha in terms of healing and utility. This is only comparing 5-star units; 4-star units suffer even more from the power creep of 5-star units.
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Honkai: Star Rail’s Lack of Kit Variety
One of the biggest issues in the current state of the game is the lack of diversity in kit design. As mentioned, follow-up attack and break effect units are being added constantly, while other design concepts have fallen to the wayside. Regular hypercarry units like Blade and Jingliu seem to be a distant memory compared to the current character designs.
Additionally, many supports, like new 4-stars, are geared more toward the break effect/follow-up meta, leaving players to just piece together off-meta teams with old units. The closest recent support for standard hypercarry would be Sparkle, who is team-agnostic in terms of design philosophy, as Sparkle generates valuable skill points for any team she is on. The recent newcomer Sunday can also be used to increase the effectiveness of a hypercarry DPS, but it is clear his kit is more suited for a summon-based character like Jing Yuan.
Damage-over-time is another popular team composition that has seen no new additions in quite some time. The last major addition to that team composition was Black Swan, who launched back in February 2024 at the start of the Penacony leg of the Astral Express journey. While Black Swan is fantastic in DoT teams, the team archetype can use more supporting units. Jiaoqiu can certainly fit into that setup, but certain supports in the game are better for that role, and he was designed to be more of a debuff unit with solid damage potential – a generalist unit more than a DoT specialist.
Perhaps it was just the theme of Penacony, but most of the new characters introduced since that arc began tend to follow a similar design philosophy that revolves around either break effect or follow-up attacks. While not every character introduced during this arc is a part of these two team compositions, a large portion of them are – especially the limited 5-star units. This, combined with the constant power creep of older 5-star units, has created a stagnation in the Honkai: Star Rail roster, as many teams end up falling into these two categories if players want to use the newest characters. Hopefully, as the Astral Express ventures to the brand-new planet coming in Version 3.0, more varied characters will be brought forward to revitalize the team-building side of Honkai: Star Rail.
Board the Astral Express and roam the universe in search of myths and legends. From global interactive entertainment brand HoYoverse comes a new space fantasy RPG.Harness the spirirt of the Trailblaze in a cel-shaded space fantasy adventure where you’ll embark on an unforgettable intergalactic odyssey. You and your fellow Astral Express passengers will hop from world to world, resolve conflicts, form friendships and uncover a wealth of mysteries.In this exciting new free-to-play game, you’ll journey through immense worlds of the unknown and bond with a series of memorable characters. Choose your companions and arrange the ultimate four-person combat team to help you take down a looming threat to the universe.
- Released
- April 26, 2023
- Engine
- Unity
- ESRB
- T for Teen
- How Long To Beat
- 24hours
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- yes
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
- Cross Save
- yes
- Cross-Platform Play
- Yes, Honkai Star Rail does have cross progression on PS5