The Best Five-Star Characters In Honkai: Star Rail, Ranked

The basic attack of every character can be used both to start the battle and to deal damage to the enemies in battle. During the battle, each character’s basic ATK DMG is a percentage of their overall ATK.

This percentage is the same for every character at a certain level. For example, each character’s level one basic attack deals damage equal to 50 percent of their ATK.

Every character has a unique skill that’s usually in line with their path. These abilities consume one skill point to trigger, and you can get skill points by using basic attacks.

The skill points of all characters are cumulative in battle, and they’re displayed beside your abilities at the bottom right.

You gain Energy by using your basic attacks and skills, or taking damage from the enemies. After getting enough energy, you can use your ultimate. Character ultimates can easily change the outcome of the battle.

This ability replaces your skill button if you’re roaming around in the open world. You can use this before starting a battle to get advantages based on the character you’re using.

Talent is the main passive that connects all of the character’s abilities. Apart from the main talent, you can still get three bonus passives on each character after ascending them a certain amount of times.

For a long time, Jing Yuan has been quite a useless character. However, Sunday’s release brought him back up into the meta while also future-proofing your account if you have him.

Sunday provides an instant turn to an ally and their summon, making him perfect for the characters from the Remembrance path. He can also give them a massive Crit DMG boost, which is highly valuable.

Fugue is essentially the limited version of Harmony Trailblazer as she can let her allies deal the extra Super Break DMG simply by existing. On top of that, she gives every enemy an extra Toughness bar.

The enemies are still considered Weakness Broken after breaking the first bar, but this second one lets you deal an additional Break DMG to them.

It is an undoubted fact that break-based teams involving Firefly and Boothill are at the top of Honkai: Star Rail’s meta, and Lingsha serves as the perfect support for these teams with her consistent Toughness-reducing damage.

She’s also quite a phenomenal healer with her follow-up being triggered every few actions and it even triggers automatically when your characters are low once every two turns, making her a good sustainer even outside of break-based teams.

If you’ve used Firefly in the game, you won’t be surprised with her position on this tier list. She’s a Weakness Break-based DPS, which means that you won’t get much value from her simply by using her Skills on the enemy.

Instead, you have to focus on breaking their Toughness as fast as possible. Once you do that though, you’ll easily see over 100,000 DMG on each enemy whenever Firefly uses her enhanced Skill or Basic Attack on them.

Thankfully, the developers have been taking care of the F2P players by giving units like the Harmony Trailblazer for free. This character’s Basic Attack or Skill might not be nearly as prominent, but the Ultimate is where it’s at.

After you use their Ultimate, whenever your allies attack a Weakness Broken enemy for the next three turns, the enemy takes extra damage based on the Break DMG and the Toughness reduction of that attack.

Harmony characters never disappoint in Honkai: Star Rail, and the same can be said for Robin. She’s a unique character who can not only increase your party’s DMG, ATK, and Crit DMG, but also gives all three allies an instant turn when she uses her Ultimate.

Apart from all these, she also deals a ton of damage every time a character launches an attack on the enemies.

The importance of a good sustainer can be seen quite frequently if you’re trying to beat the endgame content of Honkai: Star Rail, and this makes Aventurine invaluable.

The stackable shields he provides alongside the Effect RES and the extra DMG with the follow-up attack make him almost too good of a character. He’s the best current sustainer in the game as long as an enemy can’t damage you through his shield.

It’s no surprise that one of the most popular characters in various HoYoverse games gets a strong kit in Honkai: Star Rail as well. Apart from being strong, Acheron also has a unique mechanic for her Ultimate, which makes her quite fun to play.

Unfortunately, you do need some specific characters and Light Cones to get the most value from her. This will get better as the game progresses and more characters or Light Cones get released.

Nihility was already in a decent place, but Black Swan’s release allowed it to compete with Destruction because of her free massive damage. She essentially punishes enemies for getting a turn using her Arcana stacks.

You’ll commonly see over 100,000 DMG on a single target with this character, and the fact that she’s easy to build without any Crit requirement is a cherry on top.

Ruan Mei has one of the most unique kits in Honkai: Star Rail since it focuses on the weakness break aspect of combat. Her Skill can let her party members break the enemy’s Toughness Bar much faster, while the Ultimate makes it harder for them to recover.

You can use her with almost every DPS character in the game, and the DMG Bonus provided from her Skill and Ultimate can increase their DMG monumentally.

Huohuo is the latest healer to be released in the game, and she can do absolutely everything. Apart from having the ability to solo-sustain the team, she can also increase your party’s Energy and ATK.

You need a total of two solo-sustainers on your account, so if you only have one or less, it’s definitely worth getting this character since she also has Harmony elements.

Jingliu is a five-star Ice unit that enters a special state whenever you use her Skill or Ultimate twice. You can only use your buffed Skill in this state, but it destroys everything in its path. However, Jingliu does take quite a bit of skill.

For example, you need to remember that it’s better to use her Ultimate in the buffed state since she gets a DMG boost.

Hoyoverse does a decent job at balancing most of their characters around the same power, but they seem to like Dan Heng’s upgraded form a bit too much. This character is undoubtedly the strongest DPS in the game with his third Enhanced Basic Attack.

You don’t even need to have Imaginary Weakness on the opponent. Imbibitor Lunae destroys every single enemy equally, regardless of how tanky they are.

Fu Xuan is the first limited Preservation character in Honkai: Star Rail, and she excels at mitigating her team’s damage by taking it herself. She can single-handedly prevent your team from dying and particularly excels against enemies who deal single-target damage.

Kafka was one of the most anticipated characters in the game, but she also had a lot of debate around her usefulness due to the lackluster nature of DoT. On release, she shattered all expectations by making this play style one of the best.

Apart from dealing big damage, she’s also future-proof since any DoT character released in the future can be put with her to get extra damage.

Rappa has received quite a lot of love when it comes to marketing from Honkai: Star Rail, with one of the best character trailers as well. Apart from that, she’s also a phenomenal unit to have on your account to get past the endgame modes.

Rappa can easily break multiple enemies’ Weakness, and while it’s recommended, you still don’t even need Imaginary Weakness on these enemies, making her a good overall pick.

The second general from the Xianzhou fleet, Feixiao is a single-target character who works a lot like Acheron. She doesn’t have an energy bar and instead recharges her Ultimate every time her allies attack.

She can also stack her Ultimate up to two times, which serves as the main source of her damage. While she’s good enough for all the bosses with Wind Weakness, the lack of single-target fights in the game bring her down a tier.

Being a five-star limited Destruction character, it’s almost surprising to see Yunli in a tier lower than the best one because of how broken this path’s characters usually are. However, the requirement of getting enemies to attack her is the reason behind it.

However, if you can get lucky or trigger your Ultimate at the right time, you can easily circumvent this issue and get a ton of damage out of her. She works especially well against enemies who have AoE damage.

Jade’s high position on this list might be surprising since her damage isn’t particularly outstanding, though the utility she brings to the table is the main focus. Jade can apply an effect on an ally, which gives her stacks based on the number of enemies this ally attacks.

This perfectly synergizes with most Erudition characters, allowing her to be a secondary DPS on the team and making up for the lack of overall damage with this path. Furthermore, she’s the type of character that’ll only get better with time.

Unlike most DPS characters in the game, Dr. Ratio brings in a unique gameplay where you’d want to use debuffers in the team instead of the meat Harmony characters. He relies on the amount of debuffs on the enemy for his DMG.

You can see some staggering numbers from Dr. Ratio when you put him in the right time, but the only reason for him to be in a lower tier is the game being biased towards AoE units at the moment.

If you’re lucky enough to pull Sparkle in Honkai: Star Rail, your account is likely set to beat any possible endgame content. Her Skill can advance one ally’s turn by 50 percent while also giving them a massive Crit DMG bonus.

Her Talent and Ultimate increase the overall DMG of your entire team, making her viable for two-DPS compositions too. The only reason for her to not be in a higher tier is because Sunday is simply better.

To unlock the Fire Trailblazer, you’ll have to reach close to the end of the main story in Jarilo-VI, which starts after you get past the Herta Space Station. You’ll be following the path of Preservation, which specializes in protecting your team from damage.

This is very important in the endgame content of Honkai: Star Rail like the Forgotten Hall. Moreover, Fire Trailblazer can also taunt every enemy on the field, diverting the damage from the DPS of the team.

Silver Wolf is one of the most game-changing characters in Honkai: Star Rail and she’s also immune to being powercrept. She’s a Nihility character who can decrease one opponent’s DEF with her Ultimate and implant a new Weakness with her Skill.

If you form a team around her correctly, you’ll be able to use the different debuffs from her skill set efficiently. However, all her debuffs have a certain percentage chance of taking effect, which means that you’ll need a ton of Effect Hit Rate on her.

You can’t prevent your characters from taking damage due to the turn-based nature of Honkai: Star Rail. This makes it important to have at least one healer in your party, and Luocha does that job best by automatically healing characters.

He’s also great for Skill Point economy since you can just use his Basic Attacks while the Talent and automatic healing do their jobs. However, he can’t protect your party members from getting one shot.

Blade is one of the few characters in the game who can fit in almost every play style. He does high AoE damage with his Enhanced Basic Attack, Follow-up, and Ultimate. He also manages his Skill Points extremely well since he only uses one every three turns.

Put him alongside a healer or a shielder who can keep him alive and he’ll grant you victory in almost every battle.

Gepard belongs to the Preservation path, which is supposed to have high defensive capabilities. His ultimate and technique gives a shield to all the allies, and his talent prevents him from being knocked down.

With the right Effect Hit Rate, you can also Freeze the enemy using his Skill. However, most F2P and low-spending players would want to stack a ton of DEF on him so that his shield can be as tanky as possible.

Bronya is a five-star character that can be acquired from the beginner and the standard banner. Her kit is entirely based on buffing her teammates. Not only does she provide extra damage to a character with her skill, but also removes one of their debuffs.

Moreover, the character instantly gets their turn again. All of this is just her skill, and her Ultimate gives even more buffs.

He might’ve been one of the best characters in the Xianzhou continuance quests, but he’s not quite as good during the battle with a few exceptions. Simply put, if you have Acheron, Jiaoqiu becomes S+ tier for your account.

However, in most situations other than that, the damage increase he provides is far lesser than some of the other supports like Sparkle, Robin, Ruan Mei, or even Tingyun.

You can see some of the highest damage numbers while playing Boothill in Honkai: Star Rail, but the requirements for that are also relatively high. Firstly, to get the most damage out of him, you’ll have to use Harmony Trailblazer in the team.

Other than that, you also need Physical Weakness on atleast some characters on the field, and he becomes completely useless if the enemy can hide their weakness like Stellaron Hunter Sam or Bronya.

Erudition has been suffering as a path in Honkai: Star Rail, but Argenti picked it up a little by being able to deal big damage if you get his second Ultimate. However, you need quite a setup if you want to use this character.

If you’re not using Tingyun or Huohuo with him, he’ll not be able to do much in battle. His best team involves the two mentioned characters and Sunday.

This duo was the first Hunt character who was mainly a support for follow-up-based characters in the game. However, there aren’t a lot of reasons to use follow-up units at the moment since they can be a little irregular.

However, Topaz & Numby have the potential of becoming one of the best supports in the game if Hoyoverse decides to focus on indirectly buffing follow-up attacks.

During the early game, Seele felt quite amazing to play as the mobs had relatively low health, and it was easy to get use out of her Talent. However, this has become increasingly difficult with time since even the smaller mobs have a ton of HP.

Unfortunately, this has brought down Seele’s position in the meta quite a bit, and there are characters who can do better than her in almost every instance.

At release, Bailu was one of the two healers in the game. Healers are heavily rated in Honkai: Star Rail during the mid to late game, but you get one healer for free during the story. Much like Bailu, Natasha can also heal characters through her Skill and Ultimate.

The only difference is that Bailu can prevent a character from getting knocked down once in each battle. She’s a decent character to have, but you can work without her.

The best part about Trailblazer is that they’re given to every player for free. They belong to the path of Destruction, which means that they’re self-sufficient. The damage output from the Trailblazer is quite huge from the very start of the game.

Though their DEF only increases after you unlock the Perseverance bonus ability. Trailblazers can deal both single and multi-target damage to the enemy, and they’re a great replacement if you don’t have Clara or Sushang.

Yanqing is one of the characters that barely missed an entry into the S-tier. The outshining part about this character is that he’s self-sufficient when it comes to damage. He can increase his own Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and overall DMG just by using his abilities.

This makes the stats from your Relics less important during the late game.

Welt is one of the standard characters that you can acquire both from the starter banner and the Stellar Warp banner. He was the only Imaginary character at launch, which gave him the Imprisonment effect.

This effect delays enemy turns and slows them down by quite a bit. Welt’s entire kit is based around these two effects, and they can help you avoid a lot of damage. Enemies will have very high SPD when they’re higher level, and this lets you keep up with them.

Clara is an adorable Destruction character in the game. It might not look like Clara has a lot going for her, but the main damage from her kit comes from Svarog whenever she or her allies take damage. She also takes ten percent less damage from the enemies.

Her skill set is quite good, but the overall numbers prevent her from reaching S-Tier.

Jing Yuan looked quite promising when he was released for the first time since Lightning Lord dealt a ton of damage to everyone on the field. Unfortunately, with newer characters coming into play, he might not be the best when it comes to damage per second.

Of course, you can still use him to clear all the content in the game and he’s arguably one of the most fun characters to use.