Star Rail Shouldn’t Keep One Element on the Back Burner for Long

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home November 5, 2024 89 Views 6 Min Read
Star Rail Shouldn't Keep One Element on the Back Burner for Long

The current patch is less than halfway through and fans are already planning their pulls for Honkai: Star Rail Version 2.7’s Sunday and Fugue. Both supports can fit excellently in hypercarry/follow-up and break comps. While both are exciting releases, their Element Types are quite common already. Sunday shares Imaginary with nine other characters, while Fugue currently shares Fire with 10. Honkai: Star Rail could stand to make its overall roster more diverse, and it should start with an Element that seems to be on the back burner for almost a year now.




When a character’s type matches an enemy’s weakness in Honkai: Star Rail, they deal toughness damage to that opponent. When the player depletes an enemy’s toughness gauge, they deal an instance of weakness break damage, and delay that enemy’s action for at least one turn. Ally units also deal slightly more damage to an enemy who is weakness-broken. Some Elements also have special effects, like damage over time and further action delays. Therefore, it’s in the player’s best interest to invest in units with varied Types.

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Why Honkai: Star Rail Needs to Expand its Ice Roster


The current count for Ice characters in HSR is only eight, tied with Lightning and trailing only Wind’s seven units. The game already gave Wind and Lightning some love with Feixiao and Moze. As such, it’s high time to do the same for Ice. There are plenty of great reasons to give this cool Element some well-deserved attention.

Ice’s Limited DPS Units are Sparse

Ice has a few useful 4-stars like Pela and Herta. However, it lacks some good 5 stars, with the latest limited release being Ruan Mei in Version 1.6 almost a year ago. A new limited unit is long overdue for this Element Type, preferably a DPS, as Ice’s premiere damage dealer Jingliu has fallen off the meta recently. Newer Destruction characters like Firefly and Yunli can consistently do better damage than her with fewer trade-offs.

HSR has yet to release a support unit that perfectly synergizes with Jingliu, like Sparkle for Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae and Jiaoqiu for Acheron. If it has no plans to do so soon, it should add a successor to Jingliu with a new Ice DPS. Since there are already Hunt and Destruction characters in this Type, it only makes sense for the new damage dealer to follow the Path of Erudition. A 5-star Herta would fit this category perfectly.


Ice’s Weakness Break Mechanic is One of the Best in the Game

The best ways to gain an advantage in turn-based roleplaying games like HSR are to get one’s characters to act as much as possible, delay the enemy’s actions as much as possible, or both. Ice characters are experts in the second category.

Ice units freeze enemies after breaking their weakness. While an opponent is frozen, they can’t take any action for the duration of that turn. Upon thawing on their next turn, they’ll receive additional ice damage, and they still can’t act. However, their next turn will be advanced by 50%.

It would be interesting to see more modern characters utilize this weakness break effect. A new Ice DPS could deal massive damage or gain resources like extra Energy when hitting Frozen opponents. The ability to extend an enemy’s Frozen state or reduce their speed when they thaw, like Welt’s slow mechanic, would also be interesting to see. Ice could even venture into damage over time (DOT) territory by introducing a frostbite mechanic. The possibilities are plenty for this Element, and it deserves to be back in the limelight. Perhaps Honkai: Star Rail Version 3.0 could bless Ice with some great new characters.


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