Honkai Star Rail Top Up

Here we go, let’s talk about the new characters brought in Honkai Star Rail 2.4 update, Yunli, Sparkle, Huohuo and Jiaoqiu, and who you should pick! All of these characters have a lot of skills, and we’ll discuss everything you need to know about them in detail in this guide to help you decide which character might be the best choice for you to pick.

Yunli Overview

Let’s start with Yunli, as she will be our first new limited character in the 2.4 update. Yunli will be a Physical Destruction character, who focuses on launching frequent counterattack follow-up attacks on enemies and dealing tremendous damage with counterattacks after entering her ultimate.

Recapping Yunli’s kit, her basic attack will deal a small amount of damage to a single enemy, while her skills will deal physical damage to enemies and adjacent enemies, while also restoring 30% of her attack damage + 200 health at level 10. This is a great way to keep Yunli sustainable, since she’ll be getting attacked a lot and will want to get hit as often as possible.

As for Yunli’s counterattack, let’s look at her talent. Yunli’s counterattack deals damage to the enemy and its adjacent ones. And what’s really great is that when she’s hit by an enemy, she’ll recover an additional 15 energy, which helps her use her ultimate more often.

As for Yunli’s ultimate, she’ll cost 120 energy, but she can actually have up to 240 energy. This allows her to use two ultimates in a row after one trigger, or allows you to effectively schedule when to use her ultimate without worrying too much about overflowing on energy.

And Yunli’s ultimate will put her into a Perry state, which will taunt all enemies until the end of the enemy’s turn or the end of the ally’s turn. Once Perry state ends, Yunli will unleash a large amount of damage. In addition, her ultimate will increase her critical damage to this counterattack by 100%.

Yunli can actually unleash two attacks from her ultimate. The first is Intuit: Cull, which occurs when Yunli is attacked by an enemy target. She will launch a counterattack on the enemy and around her and deal 6 extra damage.

When Yunli is not hit, or assuming you use Ultimate during an ally’s turn and the enemy does not hit Yunli, she will instead release Intuit: Slash. This is similar to Cull, however, you will lose the extra damage output since you will not deal an extra 6 damage.

Yunli’s Demon Quell will allow her to ignore all Crowd Control Debuffs in Perry state of her Ultimate and reduce the damage she takes by 20%. This makes her immune to Crowd Control in Perry state and has extra survivability by reducing the damage she will take.

All in all, she is definitely a very strong physical damage dealer and very valuable to those who lack strong physical DPS. Additionally, since Yunli’s Ultimate counter attack is so powerful, it feels good to use in multiple game modes.

Jiaoqiu Overview

As for the second character in Honkai Star Rail 2.4, we have Jiaoqiu.

Jiaoqiu is a Fire Nihility character that focuses on debuffing enemies with Ashen Roast. Jiaoqiu’s skill will hit one enemy and an adjacent enemy with a chance to inflict Ashen Roast, which increases the damage dealt to enemies by allies.

It seems likely that Ashen Roast stacks will be capped at 5 stacks, as the developer livestream showed the maximum number of stacks.

As for Jiaoqiu’s ultimate, he will be able to set the number of Ashen Roast stacks for all enemies to the highest number present on the battlefield. His ultimate will create a field that increases the ultimate damage taken by enemies, and every time an enemy’s turn starts, they have a chance to take damage from Ashen Roast.

Jiaoqiu will be a great addition to Acheron’s team, as he can help Acheron get ultimate stacks faster, which is valuable for those who main Acheron.

Beyond that, I do feel like you could use a character like Pela or Guinaifen as your regular debuffer, who are 4-star options, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Sparkle & Huohuo Overview

As for our replay characters, we have Sparkle and Huohuo. Both are pretty good choices, depending on what your Honkai Star Rail Account is lacking.

Huohuo

Among them, Huohuo excels at purifying allies, providing good healing, as well as providing energy and attack through her ultimate, which can be very useful for your team to use their ultimate more often, especially when you pair Huohuo with Tingyun.

Huohuo is great for characters and teams that highly value the extra attack damage or energy from their ultimate, such as Damage over Time (DoT) teams. Argenti benefits from energy, as does Yunli, as her high energy cap allows her to recover a lot of energy from Huohuo’s ultimate.

If you’re short on premium sustain options, Huohuo is an excellent choice. But keep in mind that we’re also getting Lingsha in the 2.5 update, and she’s a new Abundance Character, so if you’re on the fence about Huohuo, that’ll be something to consider.

Sparkle

As for our second replay, that would be Quantum Harmony character, Sparkle. Sparkle is excellent at making Hypercarry-oriented characters more powerful, as you can easily use Attack Boots on your main DPS, and Sparkle will have them push forward, as she will be the fast character on the team.

Sparkle can provide huge critical damage to her skills and can also allow allies to push forward. Critical damage makes character creation easier, as now you can focus more on getting high critical hits, benefiting from the huge critical damage Sparkle can provide to team characters. What’s more, the buff will last until the start of the ally’s next turn, meaning that subsequent characters can still receive the critical damage buff from Sparkle Kit.

Sparkle can also provide more skill points to the team with her ultimate skill. She can increase the damage dealt by team characters to enemies and enhance the attack power of Quantum character on the team.

Sparkle is a very good support character that can provide great utility to the crit-based DPS characters in your account. I will say, though, that if you already have other high-level sustains like Robin or Ruan Mei and are lacking a damage dealer, then your need for Sparkle isn’t as high as it should be since you have great alternatives to use.

As for which option is best, honestly, it depends a lot on what your account has or lacks. If you don’t have a good physical DPS, I highly recommend Yunli because she feels really good to play and is very powerful. In my opinion, she’s one of the stronger DPS options you could consider, especially if you use her ultimate correctly.

Overall, I think there's a pretty good variety of characters you can choose from, and ultimately it depends on what your account might be lacking. I’d love to hear which character you guys are going to pick, or if you’re planning on skipping Honkai Star Rail 2.4!

Personally, I’m looking forward to Yunli the most because she’s super fun to play and is super powerful once you use her ultimate! See you in-game!

Kafka is almost out. And I thought I’d put my take on some talking points the community has been discussing, like Crit Kafka and Break Kafka, as well as talk about some important points Kafka mains will be needing to think about for her release and building her and her teams. 

We’ll review her kit real quick and check out her revealed traces, and discuss these new off meta builds people are talking about, as well as other topics. Then, I’ll give out a safe build path and teammates you can prepare for even if she’s only a few days away. 

Quick Kit Overview 

Let’s quickly look at her kit revealed on Hoyolab. 

Her basic attack is nothing special. Her skill is a blast skill and will detonate the central target’s DoT effects. That goes for any ally DoTs and break DoTs. Remember that Freeze, Entanglement and Imprisonment are not DoT effects. 

Her ultimate is an AOE damaging ultimate that will detonate all enemies’ DoT effects, rather than just the target in the middle. It will also apply Shock. And as a 5-star limited unit with a shock on her ultimate, we can assume this Shock will hurt a whole lot. 

Her talent is a follow up when an ally uses a basic attack, and will inflict Shock, too. Just like Serval’s kit shocks, these will not be stacking with each other. 

Her technique is an attacking one, and will also apply a shock equal to the ultimate’s one. 

Her traces make her ultimate detonate all dots, give her energy on enemies being defeated with shock, and give all of her Shock base chances a buff. 

So, Kafka’s main role is a main DPS. And her secondary role is a DoT enabler. Without knowing kit numbers, ultimate and skill will be levelled first, and then talent and then basic. Her first passive is OP, her third is a must get too, and her second is nice. 

Kafka’s Scalings 

So, with her kit, what will she scale on? 

DoTs cannot crit, and she will thus scale primarily on ATK%. She will not need much effect hit rate due to her third trace. And then she will scale heavily on speed because of the nature of her damage. The way her damage will scale on speed is because of the way she double dips in damage. 

Taking more turns is, of course, good for any DPS. If you do a little less damage than usual, but take many more turns, you’ll overall be doing a bunch more damage. 

Kafka follows the same concept. Every turn she takes, she can skill and do some damage. But then, she will also detonate her DoT effects, and any ally dot effects. 

What this means is that speed is even more important for her than usual. Your DoT damage will happen at the start of every enemy turn, but also on your own turns. Getting more instances of those is always good. You also have to, of course, stack ATK%. 

Kritka (Crit Kafka) Discussion

So, that’s two lines in your relics’ possible 4. And that is why people are going to Crit and Break Kafka. If I only need attack and speed, why not add crit. 

The problem is we don’t have infinite substats or possible substat rolls. We need those attack% rolls, and we need those speed rolls. 

If we use my Sampo sheet, and insert 10 crit rate and 10 crit damage subs, and a crit rate chest, his damage naturally comes out ahead versus normal attack%. This is losing effect hit rate, which means a lot less debuffs.

But since we compared with Kafka and Kafka won’t be needing effect hit rate, so we can follow the same concept. 

So, in a solo case, the crit will be doing more damage if you’re just considering a DoT effect, and a damage effect. Then comes in the detonations. 

The DoT scales on ATK%, the kit damage scales on attack%, and the detonations scale on ATK%. Only one of these scales on crit. The more you remove speed for crit on Kafka, the fewer detonations you’ll get. The more you remove ATK% on her for crit, the less damage her overall kit does, before one third of it being multiplied by crit. 

Foregoing speed also means potential allies’ DoTs also suffer, but Crit Kafka would be running stuff like Tingyun and Asta, so that wouldn’t matter. 

Of course, just like Serval is primarily a crit DPS, with a nice DoT, Kafka will be a DoT DPS, with a nice amount of crittable damage. So, you can still run the crit, and it will still work and be viable until MOC gets beefier and beefier. Though the nice part about not running crit, is all those pieces without crit can finally be used.

Breakfa (Break Kafka) Discussion 

As for break Kafka, her break effect scalings were removed from CBT2, which is a bit sad. But breaking is still a ton of damage when you focus in on it. And since she can detonate, going all in on speed and break effect will do decent damage. 

It will need you to be breaking, and/or bringing Serval, and being against Lightning Weak, but it can work. Remember, break shocks stack with normal shocks, and can even stack on other teammates’ break shocks. 

If you’re daring, you can stack Serval and Kafka’s 4 shocks all on one poor boss, with Serval’s ultimate infinitely extending these Shocks. 

At the end of this though, you can ask why bother, and just run attack% and speed. Of course, you can play how you want, and I’m excited to see all three builds post release. They’re all going to be great and will probably be beating the late game Memory of Chaos. 

Teammate Discussion 

As for teammates, she is a DoT enabler, as her second role. 

Remember, she is foremost a main DPS, and she can therefore run your standard team setups you’ve been building for. 

She doesn’t need those dot friends if you don’t want to build them. She can run your Tingyun, your Bronya, your Yukong if you’re going to Critka. She can be the focus of your team. She doesn’t need Sampo or Serval or Luka to perform, like some people are stating. 

Just like Serval main DPS is doing excellently, and Sampo solo DoT is working, Kafka will be fine just by herself. You can, of course, use those DoT units you’ve been building up, and they’ll be best with her due to her detonation playstyle.

But if you just want to get her and play her cause you love her, then go ahead. You’ll see plenty of showcases within the first week of her popping off as a solo DPS. 

Also Read: Mechanics Explained You Need To Know In Honkai Star Rail! - DOT, Debuff & Break Effect

Safe Relic Build

So for a safe build, 4-piece Band of Sizzling Thunder will, of course, be excellent on Kafka. 

Space Sealing Station for the planar ornaments. Pan Galactic will most likely be a DPS loss due to her third trace. You’ll also be able to run 2 piece combos, such as musketeer, messenger, and the lightning set again. There’s also the possibility of Quantum set. 

For main stats and substats, you’ll want ATK%, SPD, lightning DMG% and ATK%. 

For subs, you’ll be chasing attack% and speed, getting to whatever effect hit rate needs she has, and then plopping the rest into your desired stats. 

Light Cone Discussion 

For Light Cones, her signature will be incredible for her, due to it being stackable with her base kit shock, just like the Resolution light cone defense shred stacks with Pela’s ultimate, since they are two different sources or named debuffs. 

Good Night and Sleep Well is broken and will be amazing for her, too. You’re looking at a permanent 72% damage boost if you have 3 debuffs on the enemy. 

Fermata as a free to play option is nice, and Welt’s light cone works because of its high base ATK%, DMG%, and skill damage buff, which will be boosting her DoTs during the detonation. 

Best Friends And Teams 

Her best sub DPS will be Sampo and Luka, and Serval, and break DPS will also work great with her. 

Her best supports will be Asta, Pela and Silver Wolf. But remember, she can use other harmonies, too. Don’t feel restricted. 

A standard team comp for her will include one of your desired sub DPS, combined with a buffer or debuffer, and then a solo sustain. 

Pick your poison. Triple DoT will be a bit risky to run with lack of survivability, and not best in damage, due to Asta, Pela and Silver Wolf boosting the damage of two DPS a ton. 

I hope that helps for any Kafka wanters. It doesn’t matter if you can’t pull her when Kafka is online, you can directly buy a Honkai Star Rail Account with this character. Hope you all become Kafka havers.